


notes from an undertaker

by chuchisushi



Series: howl [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Banter, Biting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Frottage, Getting Together, Hand Jobs, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Jossed, M/M, Nipple Play, Overstimulation, Romance, Rough Sex, Slow Build, Switching, hunter!Iruka
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-01-02 09:40:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 54,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Hatake Kakashi somehow manages to become a touchstone for an ANBU hunter-nin and gets far more invested in the entire process than he intended to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> more like 'in which i liberally play with canon and neither kakashi or iruka know what they're getting into'

Kakashi thinks he’s done pretty well for himself, all things considered.

It had been a solo A-rank, but botched information had made it an S: get in, gather information about a potentially budding alliance between Sound and Stone, kill someone important as a statement, and get back in one piece to report. Unfortunately, the estimated size of each side had been about half what they actually were, the alliance wasn’t so much ‘budding’ as ‘sprouted, flowered, and bearing fruit’, and the Stone ninja had actually been missing-nin acting completely independently of their former Hidden Village. No conspiracy, no need to send a message--the mission was a bust from the get-go. Also, Orochimaru’s science in combination with Stone’s poisons? No. Just no. Kakashi was lucky to have gotten away from the fight alive.

Whether he’d stay that way was another matter entirely.

He’s not stupid enough to hole up in a cave with Stone missing-nin around; he’s in the trees instead, tucked inside the hollow trunk of a massive half-dead spruce. He’s sleeping upright in spurts of a fitful half-doze, the cracked top of the tree and the walls of his hideaway laced with every trap he could set in his state; he’s taken all the antitoxin he had in his vest, but it’s only managed to slow the poison’s advance, not stop it. His reflexes are slowed, his vision is blurred, and he knows if the nin find him, he won’t prove much of a challenge--so he hides instead. It takes all his concentration to keep his heartbeat and chakra soft and almost-nonexistent, hidden amongst the ebb of the tree’s. His leg hurts, but he ignores it. Obito’s eye hurts, and he clings to that to anchor him to life. He hears the Stone missing-nin pass by several times, sweeping for him, but they’re out of their comfort zone in the trees and he’s not close enough to the earth for them to sense him; they don’t find him. Neither do the Sound.

Night falls.

He jolts from his upright snooze when he feels his traps disassemble--not even going off, but honestly disabled, unraveled as gently and efficiently as an expectant mother picking knots out of her knitting yarn. The returning chakra was what woke him--he doesn’t sense the intruder until he appears in front of him, doesn’t know he’s in a genjutsu until it slides away from the man’s shoulders like water.

“Oh. 009720. You’re more alive than my usual.”

 

There’s a mask on the man’s face, but it’s not quite the decorated white of ANBU; this one is almost blank, with thin slits for eyes and the symbol of Hidden Leaf on its forehead. The small red marks on its white surface are almost black in the limited light and make a pattern that suggests the moonfaced countenance of an owl--or maybe that’s the bloodloss making him fanciful. Kakashi blames that for why it takes him more than a few seconds to realize what this man is.

 _Hunter_ , he clumsily signs with one hand. The other is too stiff to comfortably move, mottled with terrible bruising and maybe a few broken bones; he’d gotten it caught in one of the missing-nin’s jutsu and been too distracted by the others to break it before it did damage. (Granted, the hand he’s using to sign isn’t much better, but at least he’s sure that one is _just_ bruised.)

“You’re free to speak; I wove silence into the shape of your defenses,” the hunter-nin of Hidden Leaf replies. His voice is faintly accented, Kakashi notes, deep, but soft with the buried press of accepted grief and stillness within. Belatedly, he checks his traps briefly with the Sharingan and notices the flicker of another jutsu woven between them, so delicately light that it’s almost invisible. Not enough to hide shouting, but they’re speaking in whispers anyway, so it’s more than enough. He staggers when he closes Obito’s eye, the chakra depletion to his already near-drained system hitting hard, and the hunter steps close, his movements slow, fluid, and (most-importantly) _obvious_ , mesmerisingly liquid underneath the moonlight.

“Tell me where you’re hurt. We need to move on.”

Kakashi stares at him, honestly surprised this time. “I thought you were supposed to dispose of me.”

“As I said. You’re a little more alive than my usual.”

“You can’t--”

“Hush,” and that voice is one that expects to be obeyed; Kakashi’s spine straightens a little out of reflex before he winces and drops back into his slouch.

“... leg. Hand. Various other bits. But it’s mostly the poison,” he finally concedes.

The hunter-nin nods, pulls a medi-pack off of his hip, and reaches out one hand, resting it gently against Kakashi’s hip. The trickle of raw healing chakra is almost imperceptible, background noise against the energy landscape of the forest, but welcome all the same; it eases the stiffness out of Kakashi’s leg and pushes away the pain long enough for him to slide into a sitting position.

The hunter’s hands are deft and quick, working tirelessly with an almost mechanical precision; at one point, he pushes a vial of anti-toxin at him, an implied ‘drink’ in the movement. Kakashi downs it silently, grimaces mentally at the taste, and says, “Owl.”

“Hound,” the hunter says back just as softly, and Kakashi relaxes, some of the tension bleeding out of his shoulders.

“Sorry it took so long to recognize you. I thought you’d died, not that you’d permanently taken up the graveyard job.” Kakashi’s aware he’s breaking unspoken rules here, but he’s the one with death kneeling at his side, knitting up his fractured ribs and broken leg with small pulses of chakra; Tsunade had been so sure he’d been slain that she’d sent a _hunter-nin_ out to make sure his body wasn’t taken--a nin that had a standing order to kill if he’d been lingering too close to the edge and was too ruined to be repaired. He felt he had the right to ask a few inappropriate questions. He remembered Owl, had worked with him on one mission; he’d been fantastic at traps but even better as their team’s sensor.

The hunter's shoulders move in a minimalist shrug. “This life suits me better.” He reaches up, takes Kakashi’s injured hand in both of his, and starts healing it, just a whisper of power like before. It takes a while, and they sit in silence for long minutes, Kakashi’s hand slowly warming between his. When Owl lets go, his fingers are sore but much more moveable.

Owl touches him lightly at each of the seven major chakra points, reinforcing his system, and then stands, offering him a hand up and a blood pill after a moment. Kakashi swallows it dry, grateful for the boost; Owl must have beaten back enough of the poison that the risk of a reaction with the pill was minimal. He waits for the hunter to move again, testing the extent of the healing he’d done as he does; he recognizes the absolute stillness of the man as Owl casting out his senses to locate any chakra in the area.

“I led them on a wild goose chase,” he remarks to Kakashi when he emerges. “You took a few of them with your traps, so I laid a few of my own and leaked enough energy doing so to imitate your previous state.” Absently, he holds one of his hands out to the side as he fishes in his vest, pulling out a mission scroll edged in white. A small flicker of his chakra unlocks it, and Owl smears Kakashi’s blood from the hand he’d been holding out onto the paper’s surface; the inked words flare before disappearing, and the rest of the scroll soon follows, crumbling into dust. The next thing to come out of the vest is a paper tag; with another application of Kakashi’s blood, it starts emitting a low hum of chakra, releasing what was stored in the ink. Owl crumples it and stuffs it into a crevice in the wood of the tree.

“Once we get far enough away from your company, I’ll try to flush more of the poison out of your system. It’s very virulent--stubborn. I need to use more chakra, but we can’t risk it here.” The last thing out of the vest are two silver bells; Owl ties one to his belt and hands the other to Kakashi, who does the same. It’s a calculated risk, using the bells, but Kakashi decides to withhold his opinion for now; he’s technically Owl’s charge.

“Right. Let’s go then; we have nine hours to travel.”

The hunter leads the way, unraveling the silencing jutsu from Kakashi’s traps as he goes, and takes the time to rearm them behind them. The chakra tag pulses inside the tree, the bait in the trap until Kakashi’s blood dries on the paper, upon which the tag would go the way of the scroll. The bells are for an auditory-based genjustu--short-range, but it would allow them to sneak past anyone that heard their muted chimes. Anything sound-based is a risk with Orochimaru’s shinobi around, but the bells are Owl’s most-reliable multiple-person illusion-conduit. The hunter activates one more jutsu before they leave the tree, utilizing the dew all around them to obscure their trail from sight, scent, and the chakra landscape of the forest, effacing their steps and passage with the gentle, inevitable condensation; the droplets of water that cling to them and the trickling chakra drain are a small price to pay for safety.

They manage four hours before Kakashi’s barely-healed leg starts complaining at him; another hour and he feels all the traps around the hollow tree go off at once, some of the chakra returning to him. He manages a rough laugh (that Owl echoes) even as he fights the increasing blur of his vision; the poison is starting to affect him detrimentally again.

He starts missing steps at hour eight, but they’ve covered miles and miles without pursuit at this point, the trees beginning to change into those found around their Hidden VIllage. Owl starts looking for a place to hole up for the day at hour eight-and-a-half, and finds a small cave (honestly more like an especially wide crevice, but beggars can’t be choosers) in the cliff next to a waterfall. Kakashi squeezes in before him; Owl sets some very nasty, near-invisible traps around the entrance and releases the obscuring jutsu with a sigh after the last is placed.

“Sit down before you fall down,” he says bluntly, and Kakashi slides down the wall he’s leaning on to puddle on the floor, his head swimming. The poison’s progressed faster this time, and he’s broken out in a cold sweat.

Owl tsks at him and kneels between his legs, snapping his fingers at Kakashi's face to get his attention. “Look here,” Owl says, thumping the red chevron over where his mouth would be with his index finger; Kakashi focuses on it, hears a chime from the bell at Owl’s hip, and falls into the genjutsu Owl weaves for him to dull the pain and keep him silent.

All techniques he’s used before: genjutsu, traps, chakra sensing, and medi-nin training--which he uses to purge as much poison as he can from Kakashi’s system. He’s not as good as Tsunade (very few people are as good as Tsunade), but it’s more than enough to keep an ANBU teammate going. Owl was never going to be an offensive powerhouse--but his needle-fine chakra control, sensitivity, and versatile water and earth releases made him a fantastic support member.

It was just a pity that most of Hound’s missions hadn’t been those sorts of missions--Owl had been more likely to be on investigative or information-based missions, not the assassination ones that the Hound had been known for.

Owl snaps him out of the genjutsu quickly, and Kakashi blinks, straightening. The fuzziness and discomfort have cleared from his head, the aches in his body going the same way as the poison, and, overall, he’s feeling great--aching, just-healed bones, trace amounts of poison, and almost-drained chakra reserves aside, of course.

Speaking of chakra… “Take first watch,” Owl manages, and Kakashi shifts just enough so that when the hunter drops, he doesn’t smack himself on the rock trying to avoid falling on him. Owl’s used a hell of a lot of his reserves today and is as exhausted as Kakashi would expect from all the jutsu and healing he’s been doing; he’s out like a light as soon as he stills.

Kakashi takes first watch and doesn’t complain at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Kakashi watches for three hours; he wakes Owl up afterwards and passes out himself, propped up against the wall. Owl lets him sleep for four hours, and they share field rations before Owl beats back the poison in Kakashi’s system again. By the time that’s done, the sun has started to creep towards the horizon, dusk turning the forest warm.

Kakashi knows Owl likes to travel by night; his sensor abilities make his sight about as good as it would be during the day--and, best of all, the flare of chakra an active night-sight jutsu would use would be detectable and summarily capable of being avoided. Owl leads. Kakashi follows in his footsteps as night truly falls, plunging the branches into darkness.

They’re another day’s hard travel from the Hidden Village, but Owl might take the stretch all at once; they’ll get within the Village’s first barriers by the end of the night, but that doesn’t preclude attack. Owl might decide to push them until they’re actually within the walls. Kakashi turns over the thought as they travel, for the lack of anything better to do; if it was years ago and he was in ANBU, on an ANBU mission where Owl was leading, he’d say he’d stop at the end of the day to prevent overtaxing an injured Kakashi. But he’s years out of ANBU now (if not entirely out of touch with those on active duty) and Owl has become a permanent part of the graveyard shift and there are too many variables for Kakashi to make a fair guess.

They end up pushing on well beyond midnight; they pass the Hidden Village’s first layer of shields at around three in the morning, the witching hour. Kakashi detects the first ANBU to fall into step beside them, flanking, at four (he thinks that’s fitting). The rest of the squad isn’t far behind; they’ve obviously been waiting for him. Kakashi catches flickers of field shorthand between Owl and Cat. Somehow, he’s not surprised that Tenzo showed up for this; he’s sort of distressingly, touchingly concerned about Kakashi for a former subordinate. It’s a liability, but that doesn’t keep Kakashi from feeling warm and fuzzy about it.

They’re not attacked, and the entire troupe of them end up at Hokage Tower before the sun rises (by troupe, Kakashi means himself, Owl, Cat, and the _four_ other ANBU they’ve managed to gain between the village barriers and Tsunade’s office.) (Kakashi spends a whimsical moment wondering if this is what the Godaime feels like all the time, traveling in a posse of ANBU.)

Tsunade lets him make his report before knocking him out to treat the poison, at least, and Kakashi takes that as her apology for sending Owl out after him in the first place.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh, i... realized i forgot to set a time for this in canon--it's supposed to be during the timeskip, after naruto's gone off with jiraiya. ;v;/

He wakes up in a hospital bed that night feeling much better, at least, but also with Owl silently sitting in the chair next to him, quietly, unnervingly solicitously. Kakashi resists the urge to strike out in surprise; his arms feel like cooked noodles anyway, so his attempt would have been laughably pathetic.

“Hello. Good to see you awake,” Owl says.

“Have you been watching me sleep? That’s sort of creepy, Owl.” Kakashi tries for serious and ends up rather failing to hide his amusement; Owl laughs, a sound that’s usually not heard from one of those masks, and shakes his head.

“I just dropped by; you woke up when my chakra got within meters of you.” He tilts his head, a birdlike motion befitting his name, and asks, “How are you feeling?”

Kakashi shrugs. “Like Tsunade was using my head as a coaster for her sake bottle, but otherwise fine. I should be fit for duty again in a few days,” he adds as he checks his internal chakra reserves. It's not too much of a fib. He could handle a C-mission. If pressed.

“I’m glad,” Owl replies, and genuinely seems so; Kakashi doesn’t know how he can tell, but the way his body sits in the (extremely) uncomfortable hospital chair gives off that impression. “I don't typically get there in enough time to do more than honor the dead.”

“Well, I’m certainly appreciative that you were willing to take the effort to bring me back.”

Owl tilts his head in the other direction. “You’re a surprising one, Kakashi. I have to admit, I’m not sure what to do with you, now. I feel like I haven’t completed my mission. You don’t happen to have any final wishes, do you?”

Kakashi can’t help but laugh, barking out a rough sound of amusement. Was that a joke? From _this_  ANBU? “Please, Owl, that’s a terrible question to ask any shinobi. Where in the world would you start?”

“Well, perhaps… but I ask them anyway.” Kakashi falls still, amusement draining out of him like that. “Most of the time, I get an answer. Death has a way of clearing up your priorities, I’m told,” Owl says quietly, mostly to himself.

Kakashi stares at him, pale and distant in the growing, moonlight-drenched silence, turning his words and all their implications over in his head. Quiet dismay begins to crystalize in his chest, replacing his instinctive surprise.

“How do you deal with it,” Kakashi finally asks, “having so many ghosts upon you?” _I can barely handle my few_ , he doesn’t say. _And look at me._

“They’re a very light burden most of the time,” Owl replies, and Kakashi gets a fleeting impression of momentary, mischievous amusement from him as he says it. “And I try my best to fufill the wishes of the ones who aren’t. And those that are left… well. We all grieve quietly, in this village. As is befitting of soldiers,” he finishes, sliding back into somber with the ending of his sentence.

 

“Tell me,” Kakashi says before his mind has finished clicking through all the possibilities; he continues instinctively, like the echo of muscle memory: “A burden shared…”

Owl is the one to laugh roughly this time. “You’re not someone I’d expect trite sayings from, Hound,” and Kakashi aches for the hurt in the words.

They sit in silence for moments more before Owl speaks again.

“The easiest are those who just ask me to be there with them when they go, who don’t want to die alone. The ones that ask me to kill them in the name of duty, to spare them the pain, those are a little harder.

“The hardest are those with actual wishes, who speak to me about their regrets. Sometimes… sometimes it’s not even them anymore, it’s their chakra speaking to me, giving me their final impressions or thoughts before I erase the evidence of their deaths from the energy landscape.” Kakashi watches Owl as he goes still and tired. His spine is still straight though--determined to carry on, despite it all. “Sometimes the wishes are easy. ‘I wish I said goodbye to her,’ ‘I wish I had the chance to tell him I loved him,’ ‘I wish I could apologize,’” he says, voice shifting through tones and inflections for each.

“Other times… ‘I wish I’d lived better...’ ‘ _I wish I didn’t have to die!_ ’”

He stops.

“... for soldiers trained to outpace death... we’re often not prepared for when it catches up to us.”

He shrugs minutely and seems to shake himself, making a motion as if to run his fingers through his hair but pausing over the back of his head and putting down his hand before his fingers hit the low ponytail at the nape of his neck.

“I’m sorry; I got carried away. It’s been too long since I’ve… the Sandaime used to listen, but…”

 

Both of them still at that, grief palpable between them; it’s still been too soon since the old man’s death to relinquish the emotion.

 

“Then talk with me,” Kakashi says into the space, orders--demands, really, with the tone he uses; Owl visibly starts at it, betraying his absolute surprise ( _a large slip for a shinobi_ , Kakashi thinks, and it only reinforces his decision.)

“I couldn’t--”

“You need it.”

“It’s my burden--”

“Let me grieve with you.” Kakashi stares at the thin slits of Owl’s mask, and the hunter shifts, turning his face away.

“... I don’t understand why you would offer.”

“Call it my living wish,” Kakashi’s mouth says without input from his brain; he shuts it, but it’s too late, the words are out.

Owl stills but doesn’t look at him. “... why that one in particular?”

 _Because for once in my life, I want to create something good_ , he thinks automatically, and then pushes away his memories of the disbanded Team 7. “Do you really _need_ to know?” he says instead.

Owl is silent for long heartbeats; Kakashi waits him out, and when the hunter finally speaks, his voice is thick with emotions, heavy with encompassing grief, wry amusement, and plain exasperation.

“No. I suppose not.”

“It _is_  a living wish,” Kakashi offers, and that gets another rough laugh out of Owl.

“... fine. Fine. I don’t go out of the village much anymore--but I’ll stop by after missions if you’re in town. Is that acceptable?”

“Perfectly alright.”

He sighs and stands with a soft chiming of bells, mask still turned away; Kakashi’s eyes stray to the silver tied at his hip. “Very well. Until later, Hound. Sleep well.”

“Thank you, Owl.”

He even shuts the window behind him. _How polite_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kakashi, your friends respect you so much :"D

Kakashi escapes from the hospital the afternoon of the next day and promptly goes to track down Tenzo or Gai.

“My Eternal Rival! How Wonderful it is to see you Out and About!”

He finds Gai first.

“Gai. A word.”

They spend the next thirty minutes trading blows at a speed too quick for most people to track. Kakashi’s aware that Gai’s holding back, and it would rankle if a) he hadn’t been just released from the hospital and actually was feeling a little tender and b) he didn’t have another purpose for hunting down the man.

“I need information, Horse. What do you know about Owl?”

The sound of their blows covers up their words and they’re moving too fast to have their lips read; Gai’s eyebrows furrow (Kakashi always thinks they resemble an unfortunately-positioned caterpillar when he does that) and replies, “Why do you need to know, Hound?”

“I maaaay have… entered into an Arrangement of some kind with him.” Kakashi winces at his capitalization of the word but continues despite it. “I need some information to figure out what I’ve gotten myself into.”

Gai’s face makes an attempt at beaming, radiant happiness, which Kakashi quashes with a warning glare. “It’s not a sex arrangement, Gai; get that look off your face.”

“But my Rival! That you’re pursuing intimacy of any sort with another human being at all is a cause for celebration!”

Kakashi keeps glaring; Gai snickers and subsides, putting away his amusement at him for a moment.

“Owl is a skilled sensor and passable medi-nin--but I’m sure you already know that, my genius Rival. What you may not know is that he is both a consummate professional and a compassionate individual in the field.” Gai has the gall to laugh at the expression on Kakashi’s face. “I do not lie! It seems contradictory, especially for an organization such as ours, but I have seen Owl take an extra four minutes in the middle of a mission to weave a genjutsu to keep the children of a household deeply asleep while we did our work so they would not need to be eliminated in case we were discovered. And that was not the first! Owl has a great respect for life and dislikes a needless or reasonless waste of it.”

“When did he join the graveyard shift?” Kakashi asks, then ducks the full-strength blow that Gai tries to land, the taijutsu master accidentally letting his leashed strength slip as he concentrates on remembering.

“I do not know for sure, but it has been several years--I have not been on a mission with Owl since before your resignation from the main part of our organization.”

Kakashi absorbs this information silently, then asks, “Anything else I should be aware of?”

“Don’t speak ill of the dead,” Gai replies promptly. “Whether they were an ally or an enemy.” Kakashi’s eyebrows shoot up as Gai continues. “Gecko tried once. Owl broke his jaw.”

“Temper,” Kakashi observes neutrally.

“It flares sometimes and is inspiring in its passion. His wit is as scalding as steam!” Gai laughs again as Kakashi rolls his eye, but sobers quickly. “Truly though, Hound--tread carefully. Owl keeps those around him at arm's length--he gives his council, assistance, and mercy easily, but I have never known him to speak of a beloved or a close friend. He loves, but he loves sparingly. Perhaps he’s not capable of greater depth. Perhaps he _refuses_ to.”

Kakashi thinks of a nighttime conversation, the weight of grief internalized, and the solicitous, careful touch of a hand at his hip to keep him from falling and to ease his pain.

“I think the latter more than the former.”

 

They break apart and stand separate; Gai grins and strikes a Nice Guy pose.

“It is good to see your skills Undiminished by the Ravages of Recuperation, my Eternal Rival! When next we meet, I will Surely Challenge You to a Match of Endurance!” he booms, but his eyes are serious and solemn. “Until then! May you have The Greatest Luck!”

“My, my,” Kakashi murmurs. “Sure, Gai.”

“What a Hip and Youthful Response--” he starts, and watches Kakashi make good his escape; he lapses into silence after his rote speech to the empty training field and stands there for a long minute afterwards, a thoughtful look on his face.

* * *

 Tenzo takes a little longer, so Kakashi decides to save everyone the time and cheats.

Night falls, and Kakashi waits until he’s sure the ANBU patrols are out and about before going to his apartment window, opening it and letting his chakra flare rhythmically--one; one; two; three; five--before closing the window and withdrawing back into his living room. He works on his official mission report as he waits, scrawling characters across the paper, brows furrowed a little as he tries to remember to not use shorthand, to write slowly enough that’s it’s legible to someone else, to not use a more-convenient or accurate symbol that he’s copied from another language, and to actually describe everything and not resort to diagrams in the margins. (He is not entirely successful in any of the above. This is why he hates mission reports.)

There’s a very muted flare of chakra outside his window in lieu of a knock on the glass, and Kakashi gives the length of wire in his hand an absentminded yank to open the frame as he tries to figure out how to spell ‘concession’.

“It has less ‘s’s,” Tenzo remarks from across the low table; Kakashi flicks him in the forehead with a toasted soybean from the bowl of them he was snacking on and makes the correction. Tenzo eats the projectile soybean, the jerk, and sits down on the floor, grabbing another handful from the bowl.

“These are awful unsalted,” he remarks as he chews. “What did you need me for?”

“Your blood is going to be brine if you insist on salting everything,” Kakashi retorts, then puts down his pen. “I need some information.”

“It’s about Owl, isn’t it?”

“I thought Gai was going to give up his gossiping habit.”

“I think he felt that he needed to inform a responsible adult.”

“Hey!” Kakashi glowers at Tenzo. “I’m totally an adult,” he sulks. Tenzo just smiles sunnily back at him.

“Owl went permanently on the graveyard shift three to four years ago; he’s had ‘secondary support status only’ for two.” Going on main missions _only_ when he’d be the best choice for the team _and_ there was no-one else--Kakashi wasn’t surprised.

“Two years is a long time,” Kakashi says thoughtfully.

“Sarutobi had his reasons for allowing it. And, to be frank, I think it was a good idea. Owl was running himself thin on main missions.” Tenzo shrugs and eats another few soybeans. “Sensors, you know. They have trouble with the main missions if they’re good enough to be on them, and they end up dead if they’re not good enough and end up on them anyway because all the ones that are better are in the hands of the psych-nins or put down because of the former. Lose-lose. To be honest, I was surprised to find Owl on the secondary list at all.”

Kakashi shrugs. “Tasks that others can’t do.” He was on that list as well--sometimes, Hound still ran and hunted. Not as frequently anymore, but he was still necessary nonetheless.

“Needs must.” Tenzo takes another handful of soybeans and blithely ignores the glare Kakashi gives him for it; Kakashi moves the bowl to his lap. “So what’s this ‘Arrangement’ anyway?”

“I refuse to be the next topic of gossip once you get back out there; I know patrol around town gets boring but I’m not going to be your next juicy rumor.”

Tenzo tries a pleading look; Kakashi holds firm. His former subordinate sighs and sits up, some of the levity between them disappearing. Kakashi’s focus sharpens a little at it, not quite making the switch into fighting awareness, but attentive nonetheless.

“I actually do need to know. You’re involved with an ANBU personality; it’s either me or the Hokage.”

Kakashi stares at Tenzo for a long moment, weighing his sincerity and their duty against the weird, unexpected desire to keep everything involving Owl private and his alone. Finally, he sighs. “No official records. Word of mouth only--keep it between yourself and Gai. I don’t want the Hokage learning about it unless something drastic actually happens.”

“Fine.”

Kakashi takes a breath and exhales it slowly. “I volunteered to be Owl’s touchstone. Post-mission visits at least.”

Tenzo’s eyes go a little round and his mouth shapes an ‘oh’ as Kakashi’s words sink in--then he snorts helplessly (and _loudly_ ), breaking into peals of laughter.

“Hey! Hey, you ass--whatever happened to respect for your elders? Hmph! I know who’s not getting those candied walnuts from Lower Fire Country this year…” Kakashi grumbles. He grumpily finishes filling out the section of the mission report he’s on as he waits for Tenzo to calm down.

“S-Sorry Kakashi, sir, it’s just--you of all people as a touchstone…” Tenzo wipes a tear from the corner of his eye. “God, who thought this was a good idea?”

 

“He was using the Sandaime as his touchstone, before,” Kakashi says without looking up from his paper, and Tenzo goes quiet and serious.

“And he hasn’t been talking to anyone else?”

“Not that I could tell. Graveyard shift for a sensor capable of picking up a target’s last impressions from the _chakra landscape_ , with no-one else in his life aware he’s in ANBU and the only man who knew both lives now _dead_? Owl’s heart’s too soft, but he’s still needed. I may not be much of a touchstone, but I’m the one who saw that he was floundering and offered a hand.” His pen doesn’t still, but it does falter, making the character it’s writing wobbly. “... it would have been so easy, for him. To go out there and never come back.”

Silence collects in the room, the scratching of Kakashi’s pen muted in it, and Tenzo eventually breaks it with a sigh weighted with all the responsibility of his ANBU Commander position.

“Fuck. This is going to end terribly.”

Kakashi snorts at hearing him swear, but it’s a small moment of levity. “I’ll be careful.”

“You’re never careful enough,” Tenzo retorts. “If it comes down to it, Kakashi, the village needs Hound more than it does Owl. If he breaks…”

“If he breaks, it would be a mercy to kill him,” Kakashi replies bluntly.

 

They sit in silence in the wake of the statement, Tenzo eating the few soybeans he has left and Kakashi working his way through his paperwork. Eventually, Tenzo sighs one last time and brushes off his hands, unfolding from his seat on the floor and pulling down his mask.

“Until later.”

“Have a nice night, Cat.”

The window shutting soundlessly is his only reply.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter five, more like 'in which kakashi deals with legitimate problems weirdly but oddly effectively'
> 
> two things kakashi references:  
> [for daisies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanakotoba) (sunflowers have no meaning, but you can take it as minato wanting him to follow whatever becomes his personal 'sun')  
> [for repair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi)
> 
> and yes, kakashi's using a fountain pen; i realized that's not clear in the previous chapter--it's why it scratches while he was talking to tenzo (and why it can drip in this one)

Kakashi spends the next day uneventfully; he’s stuck in the village for a week to recover on Tsunade’s orders.

He visits the Memorial Stone, goes grocery shopping, waters Mister Ukki, rereads his favorite volume from Icha Icha Tactics, and feeds his ninkin. He makes another stab at his mission report but ends up falling asleep on the couch and waking up at nightfall groggy and starving.

He bathes and goes to bed after making himself a sandwich, already dreading how boring the next day is going to be. _Seven_ days is going to be absolute _torture_. Maybe he’ll bug Gai tomorrow; even going through one of his ridiculous challenges would be better than this.

He’s woken up that night by his traps coming undone _again_ ; he’s halfway to his living room, kunai in hand, before his reasoning catches up with his instincts and informs him that said traps hadn’t gone off--they’d been _disabled_.

 _Oh_ , Kakashi thinks bemusedly. _That was fast._

He still keeps the kunai though.

Owl is standing in his living room, placed so obviously in the fall of moonlight from the window that it can’t be anything but deliberate; he’s leaning over, the back of his neck exposed to Kakashi by the way his loosened ponytail has slid away, and he appears to be reading the half-completed mission report Kakashi’s left on his table. He doesn’t move when Kakashi steps out of the shadows in the hall, but Kakashi still gets the impression of his attention snapping onto him.

“You used a Stone Country marketplace shorthand for the number of missing-nin,” Owl comments to him. His voice is as smooth as ever, but Kakashi can read the tension in his back and shoulders--he’s uncomfortable being here, but at least he’s not overly strained from the mission he’s back from. (They form _very_ different kinds of tension. Kakashi’s fairly well-versed in both; the latter is more dangerous to his immediate health, but there’s nothing against the former not proving lethal in the end either.)

Kakashi takes a calculated risk and lays the kunai he’s holding on the sidetable next to the couch, disarming himself (of immediately obvious weapons, at least), and says, “You’re earlier than I expected.”

“The Hokage sent me out again after I’d come back. But this one was much simpler--she knew she was dead.” Kakashi realizes that Owl’s night-time visit of him in the hospital must have been right before he’d left. He’s not sure what to do with the information, the knowledge sitting uneasily in his gut. Owl moves then, straightening from his bent, deliberately vulnerable position and facing Kakashi. He can feel the hunter’s gaze running over him, taking in his relaxed, open posture, his empty hands and bare feet. His gaze lingers over his bared face (even Kakashi’s not paranoid enough to wear his mask in his own home) and the soft, cloth eyepatch over the Sharingan before flickering over his worn t-shirt and sweats--both articles of clothing nigh-impossible to hide weapons in. Kakashi would feel vulnerable in his pajamas if he weren’t well aware of how much damage he could still do--which Owl knows as well, fully-armed ANBU or not.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Kakashi asks suddenly; he can almost hear Owl’s surprised blink. Without waiting for his response, Kakashi casually ambles across the living room into the kitchen, ignoring Owl; the hunter trails after him, a prickling sensation of tense foreign chakra against his back.

Kakashi doesn’t actually make the tea--instead, he opens the cupboard door where the kettle is, as well as the one for the cabinet where he keeps his (many) teas and (multiple) tea sets. Then he waves a hand grandly at the lot and says cheerfully, “There. Help yourself, Owl. And make me a cup as well,” before sauntering back into the living room and taking a seat at the low table, dragging his paperwork over the surface to take another stab at it.

It seems like callousness, but Kakashi’s been through enough Tenzo-and-Tsunade-mandated touchstones to have experienced and subsequently discarded most of the standard methods that had been used against him: how was he supposed to drink the tea brewed for his nerves if it had been made out of his sight and he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t poisoned? How could he come down from the battle high if he was so _aware_ of his touchstones' eyes, attention, focus on him? How was he supposed to be calm if he was uncomfortable in the area, unfamiliar with the ebb and flow of people in it and unaware of his exits and routes of escape?

So he sits in a clear line of sight from the kitchen, his back facing the hallway instead of the sofa and wall behind it; he leaves the choice of the window (clear line of escape), the couch (a solid wall behind it), or the kitchen (investigated territory) to Owl. He doesn’t watch him, focusing entirely on his mission report, and lets Owl do whatever he has to to his kettle, tea sets, and loose leaf so he can feel safe.

He hears the sink turning on, the sound of the kettle filling, and the clunk and _whoosh_ of the burner igniting after it’s set on the stove; the sound of water continues, punctuated by the clatter of porcelain.

The kettle goes off and gets hushed, moved; there’s more soft noises for a minute or so, the sink turning off eventually, before Owl emerges from the kitchen, a teapot in one hand and two cups in the other. His gloves are off, tucked into his belt; droplets of water cling to his fingers and the outsides of the ceramic.

Owl pours for both of them; Kakashi murmurs a thank you before lifting the cup to his face to inhale the steam. Flowers and fruit--that ume blossom tea from Grass Country, then.

“You have so many kinds of tea,” Owl comments; he sits with his back to the couch, caddy-corner to Kakashi, and keeps his gloves off. Kakashi counts both as small victories, even if the hunter's spine is ramrod straight with uneasiness.

“Mm, well… it was sort of a joke originally. I used to hate it: it was served at every boring official function; it took too long to make; and my father enjoyed it.” He stares into his cup. “But I couldn’t hold on. Like with the mask, my feelings on the subject changed. The Yondaime gave me a tea set for one of my birthdays and somehow word got out.” He shrugs. “ANBU sometimes leave me tea when they come back from missions.” He doesn’t mention how sometimes it’s less a gift and more a ‘thank you for getting everyone back home in basically one piece.' He takes a sip of the brew instead, savoring the faint sweetness and smell-taste of the flowers’ perfume, holding onto the cup; he traces the gold filigree on the natural, clay-colored surface with his fingertips. The Sandaime had given him this set, years ago. The hue of the cups and pot remind him of the old man now, uncut and weathered wise with the years.

“Which one was the first?”

“The one with the sunflowers,” Kakashi replies. He doesn’t say anything about the daisies painted on the ceramic as well; it was a silent faith his teacher had had in him.

“Ah.” Owl pauses, weighing his words. “That one was missing a cup…?”

“I broke it,” Kakashi says honestly.  “After the Kyuubi’s attack.” He’d been so angry and full of loss then… now, he’s glad that he hadn’t broken the whole set like he’d intended to. The sound of shattering ceramic had brought him back to his senses and made him start to grieve. “I still have the pieces around somewhere… I’d intended to get it fixed, but--” Kakashi shrugs and swallows the thought of that cup being Minato’s, his out of a matching four; he’ll have it fixed, cover the cracks with gold, when he’s ready to not cling so strongly to his memory.

They sit in silence, sipping cups of tea (Owl around his mask), Kakashi rereading his report and correcting bits of it, for long minutes; Kakashi counts a tense fifteen tick by before Owl speaks again, mild hostility and suspicion in his tone.

“Why did you tell me that?”

“You asked,” Kakashi points out; Owl makes an exasperated noise edging towards anger.

“Because you so willingly tell people about your life.”

“Then it’s because I know you can keep secrets.” Kakashi takes another sip of tea and sets his empty cup aside; Owl automatically fills it, he notes with amusement. _How polite~_

“There’s no way you can actually know that.”

“You’re here, aren’t you? And when we talked in the hospital--generalizations, no specifics. If you were going to go missing-nin, you’d have done it long ago, what with the long leash given to the hunter-nin.” Kakashi toys with his pen, flipping it over and over in his fingers. A few drops of ink land on the table and his mission report; Kakashi ignores them (it’s not like he’s ruining the surface any _more_ ) and Owl stares at the motion like it’s explaining all the secrets of the world for some reason. “I can hear your mind whirring, Owl; really, I don’t have any ulterior motives here. I’m telling you because you asked and because there’s a pit of sorrow in you so deep that there’s no bottom to it anymore. That’s where all your secrets and sadness go, right? I doubt you’ll dredge those depths just to tell the story of how I got my first tea set and broke a cup from it in a fit of rage.” He puts down the pen and picks up his teacup, deliberately ignoring Owl’s sudden and absolute stillness.

“You… can’t know that.” Owl’s voice is steady but extremely flat--more an ANBU’s than Owl’s, focused, still: all the emotion's been pressed out of it--or tightly squeezed away into the corners of his soul.

“Can’t I? You move with such burdened grace--some people have rooms, boxes, chests, books that they fill with heartbreak and lock away, never to be opened again for fear of breaking. Yours is open in plain sight for those who have eyes to see.” Kakashi stares intently down at his tea; _she had been the same way_ , he wants to say, remembering Rin’s face, determined even as she left life. She’d carried Obito’s death as Owl did all of his: solemn and dignified and obvious for those who knew how to see it, and she’d grieved for his inevitable sorrow and her lost future even as she’d lept before his hand. [ ~~In his weakest moments, he wishes he could hate her for it.~~ ] “It’s not so poor a thing, Owl. You don’t break as easily. You just overflow until you _drown_. Where’s the water at now? Ankle? Thigh? Waist?” he asks mercilessly.

 

“You--you’re--” and what's under pressure must give; all the emotion floods back into his voice as rising anger and _volume._ Owl slams down his teacup with a **thump** , the liquid sloshing out. ( _What a nice metaphor._ ) “I’ve never--how could you--I've never heard anything so _rude_ or--or **presumptuous** come from _anyone's_ mouth!” He’s half standing now, chakra spiking, almost on his feet. “I can’t _believe_ you, Hound!” Owl spits out. “How could you make such a--a--an erroneous and frankly _outrageous_ statement _to my face_ like that--you don’t even--you _can't even_ _**know**_ _me!_ ” and Kakashi can see why he’d been given a hunter’s name now--and also why Gai had warned for temper.

“Hmm,” Kakashi intones noncommittally, as casually as he can, rescuing his mission report from further drenching via tea. Best wrap things up before all his bridges are burned. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But in either case, you’re not uncomfortable to be here anymore, are you? Unless I _gravely_ misread the killing aura that’s currently being leveled at me quite pointedly.”

Owl does that nigh-audible blink again. ( _Good heavens, how_ does _he manage to be so emotive even with a mask on?_ Kakashi thinks.) He stares back at Owl mildly, and, slowly, the hunter sits back down, his chakra dwindling in small increments back to normal levels, obviously thinking furiously.

“... that was more manipulative of you than I expected. Also rude. But effective,” Owl says finally. He holds out a hand, and Kakashi sets the mission report he’s still holding in it; Owl lays it down on a clear spot on the table and performs a jutsu that drives the tea from the paper, leaving it dry (if tinted faintly pink now). He turns the jutsu to the table itself as well, cleaning it before releasing his hands with a sigh. “And risky. You couldn’t have known that I wouldn’t have blown up in your face. Were you deliberately testing my temper?”

“I wanted to find out if you were capable of breaking Gecko’s jaw with a punch.” _Yes. And if you typically expressed your anger through physical violence._

“I broke a knuckle, too,” Owl admits ruefully. “I was too angry to aim properly. I also knocked him off the branch that he was standing on. I’m lucky he didn’t snap his neck, the stupid bastard.”

Kakashi laughs, startled by Owl’s bluntness, and Owl even snickers weakly with him; the silence that it dwindles into is comfortable, finally (if mildly exasperated on Owl's part).

 

“I should go, then,” he says finally. The hunter actually sounds a bit regretful, which is surprising. “It’s late and I’ve kept you up.”

Kakashi can’t help leering a bit. “You can keep me up anytime, Owl.” He laughs again as Owl squawks indignantly. “Ah, but--don’t feel bad about waking me up. You’re still welcome here at any time. If my machinations aren’t too unappealing to you.”

(He hopes Owl reads that as the apology it is.)

Owl makes a softly noncommittal noise, and Kakashi finds himself holding his breath even as he attempts to preserve his attitude of relaxation.

“Have snacks next time,” Owl says eventually, and there’s that (welcome) hint of mischief in his voice.

( _You’re forgiven. Don’t do it again._ )

Kakashi snorts in surprise, and Owl gives him his impression of smiling again before pushing away his mask long enough to drain his cup of tea. Kakashi automatically notes the smooth line of his throat and jaw before mentally shaking himself and looking away. He hears Owl set down his cup, slide on his gloves, and stand; he looks back when he feels Owl’s attention on him again.

Owl sketches a very general bow in his direction. “Thank you, though. Really. Until later, Kakashi.”

“No need to thank me,” Kakashi says, “it was good to have the company” and surprises himself with the sincerity of the statement. “Journey safe, Owl.”

The hunter inclines his head cordially in response and exits via the window. Kakashi sits at the table for long moments after, staring at the ink-stained surface with his eyebrows furrowed before finally getting up to reset his traps and clean the tea set.


	6. Chapter 6

He sort of ends up oversleeping the next day; like most members of ANBU, he has the ability to doze off anytime, anywhere. It’s usually not the most-restful of sleeps (he himself can only get to a certain depth before being chased back up to consciousness by nightmares), but it suffices. Kakashi’s heard ANBU sleep compared to a strung-together series of catnaps, and he thinks that’s probably the most-accurate description he knows of.

So by the time he really decides to wake up and convinces himself to get out of bed, his internal clock tells him it’s two in the afternoon (he can’t actually tell; those blackout curtains in his bedroom window work extremely well.) He finishes his mission report over breakfast and a few cups of tea, gets dressed, and grabs volume five of _Icha Icha Paradise_ to take to the Mission Room. He really needs to turn in his report at this point; he’ll go after he visits the Memorial Stone.

Hopefully Iruka won’t leave him too bruised and bleeding from the verbal beatdown he’ll give him over the state of his report.

 _I’ve handed in worse_ , he tells himself as he gets into line. _And later, too. You can handle it._

Somehow, the thought isn’t that reassuring.

Kakashi keeps his nose firmly in his book as the line inches forward and valiantly ignores the stares (or, he guesses, they’re probably more like covert glances; they’re shinobi after all) he can feel on him. He wonders what the topic of discussion is this time--maybe it’s gotten out that he ended up in the hospital again? Scrutinizing him for new or hidden injuries? Kakashi allows himself a soundless sigh through his nose, never taking his eye off his Icha Icha. Maybe he should doctor another one of his books. He’ll never get tired of Icha Icha, but there’s only so many times one can read Jiraya’s writing in a day--there’s a difference between maintaining a reputation and courting a mental break from repetitive reading material. Maybe he’ll alter the cover of _Summer Blossoms_ ; he hasn’t read that one in a while, and it would be interesting to immerse himself in a purely civilian romance again. And _Summer Blossoms_ was only a liiiiitle over the top, if he remembers correctly, in that good way romance novels can get.

“Next, please.”

Kakashi gravitates towards the voice, stepping up to the counter and setting down his mission report. “My, my, good morning Iruka-sensei,” he says, glancing up from his book languidly to focus on the man--and mentally doing a double take as he notices the teacher’s face.

He looks _awful_ \--well, okay, granted, he doesn’t look that much different than he usually does, but for Kakashi, so used to picking out small details and variations, the changes are glaring: the teacher’s face is a little paler than usual, skin tone approaching the color of his scar; his ponytail is drooping, strands escaping to drape over his forehead protector; and there’s grey circles underneath his eyes. He looks exhausted, condition exposed by his blunted movements and lengthened reaction times; it takes him a full second longer than usual to start scowling at Kakashi’s report.

“Hatake, sir, I do hope you’re aware that it’s four in the afternoon, not morning anymore,” Iruka says tartly. Kakashi relaxes minutely at that; the sensei’s sharp tongue still seems to be in working order, so whatever it was that made him look like that must not have been too bad in the long run. ( _And when did you start being able to judge Iruka-sensei’s life by how scathing he is at you when you turn in a report? Get another hobby, Hatake, jeeze_ , he thinks to himself.)

“Oh, is it? I must have gotten quite lost this time-a little bird took me on quite the journey last night--or was it this morning?” He closes his book with his thumb inside it and taps his chin with the spine, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. He can still see Iruka’s twitch, though. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter that much. I got back eventually, hm?”

“And _I_ was kept up all night by an annoying, noisy, barking dog, but I still managed to get up on time today, Hatake, sir.” He looks like he’s working up to a really good yell (Kakashi can see all the jonin against the walls bracing themselves for the impending explosion)--but deflates before he really gets going, all the building annoyance just puffing out of him.

Kakashi (and all said jonin) stare at the teacher incredulously; Kakashi starts feeling vaguely uneasy. This is a change--and he’s not entirely sure what prompted it or how to deal with it. Iruka just taps his fingertip against the line of ink droplets over the report’s surface, oblivious to the attention, eyes flicking from side to side as he scans the contents for completion.

And, to Kakashi’s (embarrassingly) visible surprise, he stamps it as ‘acceptable’ and sets it aside with nothing more than a long suffering sigh.

“Um,” Kakashi manages, eye flicking from his report to the teacher and back.

“Thank you for your hard work, sir,” is all Iruka says. “Next, please!”

Kakashi pushes down his surprise and gives him a nod, sauntering off; Asuma detaches from the wall of the Mission Room as he passes and falls into step beside him.

“What the hell was that?” Asuma hisses softly at him once the door closes behind them; Kakashi gives him an openly perplexed shrug (a twitch of his shoulders a full two inches) in response as they start off down the hallway. “... you’re not sleeping with him, are you?”

“Why does everyone think I’m using my dick to charm people?” Kakashi asks the ceiling rhetorically, ignoring Asuma’s bark of laughter. “I haven’t talked to Umino-sensei since the last time I got chewed out over my mission report.”

“Well, he looks like _someone_ kept him up.”

“Well, don’t look at _me_. Maybe he was serious about the dog.” Something sounds familiar about those statements; Kakashi’s eyebrows furrow and he mentally goes over his words again, but whatever it was eludes him. He lets it go to stew in his subconscious. Maybe it’ll cough up an answer when he’s not paying attention.

They make it out into the afternoon sun; Kakashi holds his Icha Icha out over his forehead to shade his eye until it adjusts.

“So how’s recovery leave treating you?” Asuma asks as they start off down the street; he laughs loudly at the disgusted look Kakashi gives him. “That bad, huh? I’d offer to play a round of shogi against you, but--” He shrugs. “It’d be like playing against Shikamaru all over again, and I don’t think my pride could take that.”

“My, my, Asuma, I think you underestimate yourself,” Kakashi replies. “The offer’s appreciated, but I must decline.”

“Yeah, Iruka-sensei letting you off easy like that… gives me the heebiejeebies, too. You keep an eye out over the next few days; he’s something clever with those pranks he pulls. I think Ibiki still can’t get near lime gelatin without developing a spontaneous eye twitch.”

“What _did_ Ibiki do to get his office embalmed in it, anyway? I don’t think I ever heard a definitive answer.”

“General consensus says he borrowed some files from the Mission Archive and took too long to return them despite the sensei’s repeated warnings.”

“Lime gelatin seems a bit excessive.”

“Borrowed without _asking_ ,” Asuma clarifies.

“Ah,” Kakashi says. “That explains it.”

They come to a crossroads and stop; Asuma jerks his chin at him in farewell and Kakashi takes to the rooftops to head home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> iruka, don't tease kakashi like that; you'll just make him more paranoid


	7. Chapter 7

It’s not that he’s _forgotten_ about the sensei, per se; it’s just that Iruka and his paths don’t usually cross. The one thing they’d had in common is out god-knows-where at the side of a _sage_ who also writes _erotica_ and the last actual talk they’d had that wasn’t over ‘the paltry state of this mission report I’ve been misfortunate enough to have deposited on my desk’ was at the chunin exams--which hadn’t gone much better.

Kakashi sighs to himself. Iruka was just so _ordinary_ for a trained killer of a village literally hidden in the leaves. Kakashi had broken into Hokage Tower when he’d been assigned Team 7, of course, going through their records and the records of those closest to them to prepare himself for what he could expect of them (it had been a sad competition between Sasuke’s files and Naruto’s files in the sheer lack of cross references both had for close contacts), and had read Iruka’s file then--he was everything it said he was. Brown hair, brown eyes, too kind-hearted for a shinobi, a teacher, a former troublemaker until the Sandaime had taken him under his wing, a temper, graduated as a genin at eleven, made chunin at sixteen, was good enough to be a tokubetsu jonin but had no desire for the position, parents killed in the Kyuubi attack, no living family in the village. Check, check, check. There’d been that mess with Mizuki back before Naruto had come under his tutelage, but that had checked out, too, with Iruka-sensei innocent and plus one shiny new scar. The only other interesting thing about the man was that Iruka’s mother had been a refugee from Mist--but that was hardly unusual. The wars had hit many hard, and Mist, with its fear of the bloodline traits, had been one of the hardest. She’d never become a shinobi of the Leaf and had met Iruka’s father a few years after she’d settled in the village, tying her loyalties down to him; Iruka’s father had been from a family native to the village and had served as a shinobi, so no question of his loyalty there--especially after he’d given his life against the Kyuubi.

Neat, nice, and simple. Which was sort of astonishing in itself given where Iruka-sensei was raised and what he did for a living. Kakashi was pretty sure he wouldn’t be as collected as the teacher if he had to wrangle twenty pre-genin on an almost-daily basis. (He shudders at the very thought.)

… None of which explain why Kakashi’s currently perched in a tree outside Iruka-sensei’s classroom, lazing in the branches with a disguised copy of _Summer Blossoms_ and carefully keeping his chakra low so he’s not immediately obvious (by immediately obvious, he means if a jonin metaphorically squinted with his or her chakra senses, they might be able to see him).

To be completely honest, _Kakashi’s_ not really sure why he’s out here. He blames it on this being his fourth day of ordered captivity in the village; he’d tried to entertain himself yesterday and just ended up running laps around the Forest of Death with Gai. (He’d won, tieing them again and making Gai burst into Manly Tears of Appreciation And Gratification That His Eternal Rival Was So Recovered!, so he was doubling up watching Iruka-sensei with hiding from Gai to avoid a rematch.)

Iruka was good with kids though, Kakashi has to admit as he watches; he might have confiscated no less than three blunt shuriken, a live frog, and four notes on increasingly floral stationery by lunchtime, but he still managed to teach and keep control of his class. Kakashi toys with the idea of asking the teacher if that trick he’d used to intercept the paper airplane with a piece of thrown chalk was a jutsu or just _really good_ instincts, but eventually discards it as a bad job. Somehow, he doesn’t think Iruka would take too kindly to having him drop in just to ask a question like that.

He falls asleep instead, dropping into a catnap on the branches; he wakes up briefly when the school doors slam open, disgorging Iruka’s class into the back field for… _Is that weapons training? Well. More luck to the sensei_ , and falling asleep again.

Waking up to three shuriken flying at him is sort of displeasing and startling; Kakashi ducks one, hops over the other, and blocks the last with the nearest object at hand--which happens to be _Summer Blossoms_. The projectile sinks in deep with a solid _thunk_ , and Kakashi sighs. And people wonder why he has multiple copies of books.

There’s a sort of resounding, expectant silence from the training field; Kakashi steps off the branch he’s now standing on (having executed a roll to avoid the first shuriken) and drops onto the grass lightly, becoming the immediate focus of twenty pre-genin and their sensei, all of them armed with dull (or, in Iruka's case, not so dull) shuriken. Some of the kids gasp and immediately start chattering amongst themselves; Iruka goes a little pale before blushing furiously, his face going red.

Kakashi saunters over to them and deliberately plucks the (sharp) shuriken out of his book, handing it back to the teacher. “I believe this is yours?”

“Ah--yes. Sorry. I.. uh, I thought you were Genma. He comes by to pester the class and me sometimes; I thought I’d teach him a lesson.” He accepts his shuriken back gingerly, like he’s afraid Kakashi’s put an exploding tag on it or something, then frowns first at the book in his hand and then at him. “Please don’t read material of that nature around my students, Hatake, sir. And what were you doing in that tree anyway?”

“My, my, sensei--can’t a shinobi get a little lost on the road of life? I did a little wandering myself and decided that I needed a break, so I climbed a tree for the view and fell asleep. And as for the book…” Kakashi holds it up with a flourish, and Iruka makes a motion like he’s going to throw out his arms and jump in front of his students to shield them from the terrors of erotica. “... I thought you taught how to look underneath the underneath. Or is it that you have a problem with romance novels?” He hands the book to a now thunderously-glowering Iruka-sensei and makes a short hop back out of range, discreetly moving in a direction to make his exit. Iruka flips open the book gingerly, peers at the content, and makes an exasperated noise; by the time he looks up, Kakashi’s several meters away and still moving.

“Wh--Your book??” Iruka calls.

“You can keep it!” Kakashi carols back, grinning widely underneath his mask and languidly waving a hand. “I have a less-perforated copy!”

The last thing he sees before he turns tail and actually runs is the blossoming expression of mingled exasperation, annoyance, anger, and laughing _amusement_ on Iruka-sensei’s face--an instant before he starts outright _yelling_ ; it isn’t until Kakashi’s halfway home, ears still ringing a little, that he realizes that he doesn’t know how Iruka managed to spot him in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _YOU ARE A GROWN-ASS MAN, KAKASHI, NOT TWELVE, STOP FLIRTING LIKE YOU ARE_


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter eight, aka in which kakashi is the worst at asking for what he actually needs or wants and also doesn't know how to emotion well, but luckily iruka
> 
> first off, happy turkey day to all my US readers! happy ordinary nov. 28th to everyone else /SHOT (though i'm informed hanukkah is nowish, too, so happy hanukkah as well)
> 
> so first off, i'm bumping up the fic rating for this chapter for violence; the beginning of this chapter deals with unethical experiments on humans, unethical experiments on children, and mercy kills (er, so 2/3rds of tenzo's backstory), as well as a small bit about kakashi being kinda stupid with medication--the rest of the chapter is kakashi dealing, or rather, not dealing very well.
> 
> brief notes about the 'sleeping pills' kakashi takes: first off, please follow all instructions given to you with any medication you take irl; as a biologist, i can tell you there's a reason they're given the way they are, and discuss any desired changes with your doctor to get their okay! (taking a full course of antibiotics comes to mind... please prevent the world from getting more superbacterica, please :"| as interesting as they are to study, they're a menace otherwise.)
> 
> that being said, narutoverse has pills that magically restore chakra and blood, _so..._ a better term for what kakashi's using would be 'restorative coma pills'; primarily given to shinobi with a high turnover rate between difficult missions (basically all jonin), they're chakra-activated once in the body and push the taker into deep, dreamless sleep. (Or rather, make the dreams difficult/impossible to remember upon waking.) Their primary function is to increase the rate of injury repair, which is why they're supposed to be taken with food, so they have something to work with; they're also not supposed to be taken while low on chakra, for fear of bodily damage via prolonged, unsupervised sleep. The hospital uses a version of this for recovering patients; this is like the over-the-counter version. It's supposed to last for 1/2day-1day, but the effect was exacerbated with kakashi's chakra depletion because he's an idiot.
> 
> they also don't do squat for chakra restoration; i'd always imagined chakra restoration as a fiddly process that's not quite perfected artificially and that popping multiple soldier pills is dangerous (and comes with a serious post-drug drop) because of that.
> 
> erk--sorry, headcanons got away from me there! effusive apologies for the long author note; on to the fic!

His last two days of rest are cut short by Horse delivering a time-sensitive S-class mission to him at midnight; five minutes later, they’re meeting up with Sparrow and Pike to form a four man team to investigate a populated Sound nin base that may be hosting test subjects.

It’s a long, bloody mission, and Kakashi’s glad Cat didn’t join them; there _are_ test subjects, or what’s _left_ of test subjects, and more than one of them was a child.

The worst part of it is that, even though they manage to rout the Sound nin at the base, they can barely save anyone; there’s four of them to a handful of survivors in godawful condition and they just end up with those still remaining and coherent begging the nin they just saw brutally slaughter men in front of them to save two of the youngest--and to kill the rest of them so they don’t have to suffer anymore.

He does it. He’s the team’s leader. He’s Hound. What’s a little more blood on his hands? He remembers their names and faces and final words, promising to tell as many of their families as he can as the rest of his team collects as much relevant data on the two they’re taking that they find before they torch the place.

He smells like ash and chemicals and blood by the time they go, and their names weigh heavy like lead and guilt on the back of his tongue. He doesn’t offer to carry one of the kids; the other ANBU give him a respectful berth, wary of his tightly-locked-down emotions.

(Some of them had taken too-long minutes to die, altered so by Orochimaru’s science that they’d had to be nearly obliterated to end their lives. They’d still thanked him, and he chokes down the taste of bile as he runs.)

His report to Tsunade is done on autopilot, trailing around next to her as she starts working furiously on the kids. He disappears when she dismisses him absentmindedly and goes home, slipping through his window; he drops his mask and bloody gloves where they land and dives for the pen and notepad he’d left out for himself when he’d left four days ago. He writes down all their names, sketches their faces, transcribes their final words with hands that are starting to shake with exhaustion and post-mission reaction, and when he finishes the last word of the last memory, he exhales unsteadily and puts his forehead down on the table and stays there in the uncomfortable position for long minutes, just _breathing_.

Then he goes to the bathroom and coughs up what feels like a pound of chemical-laced ash before showering.

God. He hates killing children.

He cleans up his bloody ANBU clothes as best as he can stand to tonight before fishing the bottle of sleeping pills out of his bedside table and taking a dose dry--he knows he’s supposed to eat with them or whatever, actually follow the damn instructions, but all he wants to do is just make the world and his overactive, racing mind go away for as long as he can.

Chemical sleep pulls him under, and he escapes from regret in its oblivion.

* * *

He wakes up to his traps being disabled and makes it all the way down the hall to the living room this time, kunai and two shuriken in hand, before he realizes who it must be; he leaves heavily on the wall right next to the doorway of the hallway and  _stabs_  the end table this time, plunging the kunai into the scarred wooden surface and tossing the shuriken beside it.

“Stop looking,” he snaps, and gives in to the urge to rub his face; he scrubs it with the heel of one hand and between when he lifts it and when he lowers it, Owl’s across the room soundlessly, the notepad he’d been flipping through sitting exactly where Kakashi had left it--god, what day was it, even? This is why he hates drugged sleep; his sense of time gets screwed up. Also, his mouth tastes like something crawled in and died in it.

“The Hokage was… worried,” Owl says carefully. His hands are open and loose at his sides. Kakashi crosses his arms and doesn’t even try to rein in his annoyance and disquiet; he can feel it seething in his chakra. Somehow, it never really occurs to him to hide the flux of his feelings from the hunter. He’s told Owl so much about himself already, even if it was just two nighttime meetings and one near-death rescue; he’s hidden so long that even the tiniest anecdotes of his life are like massive secrets now. ( _And there’s something terrible about that,_  he thinks,  _something as awful as taking A-rank assassination missions at seven, but that’s my life_  and he shuts that thought away.)

“And?” Kakashi says roughly; Owl doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move save to breathe.

“Horse was, too. As was Cat. They said they shouldn’t visit, though. And that you’d know why. And that Horse apologizes--sincerely and effusively.”

Kakashi’s jaw creaks; he realizes he’s clenching his jaw hard enough to make the muscles ache. “So they sent you.”

“Because it’s been a day and a half since the end of the mission and no-one had seen you since you left the Hokage’s office almost chakra-depleted.”

Kakashi flinches. A day and a half. An entire day and a half--no wonder he feels like shit.

“I was sleeping,” he finally manages, pushing off of the wall and turning back to the hall. “Go away, Owl; I’m obviously alive.”

He’s halfway to the bedroom when he hears the flip of paper and Owl calling back to him, “Kakashi. Please let me help with them” and the entire fucking _world_  blurs as he turns; between one second and the next, there’s the sound of breaking wood and a very solid thump and he has Owl facedown underneath him, with his arm twisted up past the small of his back and his knee between his shoulderblades, his kunai at the vulnerable join of throat to jaw that’s been exposed with the awkward way Owl’s head is twisted.

He doesn’t complete the blow; he can feel himself shaking, distantly, but the point of his kunai is steady, drawing a bead of red.

“Hound,” Owl says quietly. “You’re bleeding.”

“Why the fuck are you doing this?” Kakashi hisses back. He can feel his chakra fluxing and waning and that’s concerning; even more so is the spike of growing pain at the back of his head.

Owl just breathes underneath him, chakra quiet and limpid. “The Sandaime helped me get a handle on my ability. He wasn’t the one who pushed me to become a hunter. He just suggested it. It was  _me_  who took the final push to do it.

“I took up the mask not because I wanted to hunt and not because I was the best or only person capable of doing so--I did it because I knew I could help. I did it because I knew that I was good with people and could anchor myself in life to keep myself from following my targets into death.

“I’m good at people. And I love people. Whether enemy or ally, I remember that every person has valuable connection to life and each other--that all disappear when they die. It leaves a hole for those left behind. Sometimes you can remember the shape of the one who’s gone by their loose threads hanging cut. Sometimes you can’t. I help with the ones who have fewer threads, who die alone, whose lives are ended by violence.” He falls silent, and Kakashi can see the flutter of eyelashes in the slits of his mask. “You were right, you know. I have a pit of silence in me deep enough to drown in. That’s how I’ve coped for so long--I’ve been a hunter for Leaf for over half a decade now. I reacted so strongly because I didn’t like the idea--I thought I kept their memories sharp and present, close. Instead, they sink deep, and it hurts to find them again.

“But I realized that it’s alright. I’d trained myself to stand alone, and here I am, with a record of touchstones behind me. I need the help--to need it isn’t a weakness.

“You’re bleeding, Hound--Kakashi. Please… let me help.”

He blinks, and the shake of Kakashi’s body has spread to his hands finally; it tears the skin at Owl’s neck a little wider, but the red that appears on his mask is a drop like rain--just a blink, and a perfectly irregular circle appears on the cold ceramic. He stares at it uneasily, internally confused, and watches it well to one side and start a tracking path down Owl’s cheek. His head feels like it it’s floating--or maybe that’s just Owl’s chakra woven cradled around him, so incrementally and surreptitiously that he hadn’t noticed its movements, inevitable and slow like the tide.

It really is just like drowning, sinking through sunlit water to the earth at the bottom of a pool, and there’s such an absolute, peaceful silence that Kakashi wonders if this is the stillness of the grave--a gentle death that, for once, he doesn’t need to fight against.

It feels like absolution, and he lets the kunai drop.

 

The weapon clatters against the edge of Owl’s mask, dropping to the floor, and Kakashi lets go of Owl’s arm, easing his weight slowly off of his back, kneeling next to him. A flicker of alarm rises in him as Owl stirs, and he tenses sharply again, but the responding press of Owl’s chakra around him soothes him again, flowing like water around his body. He sits, quiescent but wary, as Owl regains vertical, kneeling like him with slow, open movements, stripping off his gloves in the same manner. His fingers are square and thick, but dexterous despite that--Kakashi thinks it’s fitting, solid hands to work the earth and nimble hands to guide the water.

Owl raises one and slowly, gently, covers Kakashi’s left eye.

“Close this, please. You don’t need the further chakra drain.”

His eyelashes feel stiff as he complies; Owl moves his hand and uses his thumb to gently brush away the uncomfortable moisture that wells up at the motion. It comes away red.

 _Oh. I_  was  _bleeding._

“You feel tired,” Owl says, and his chakra drifts around Kakashi, the water gently testing his every pore and boundary.

“Doesn’t it sting?” Kakashi asks back. He  _is_  tired. He moves his head anyway, gesturing in the theoretical direction of Owl’s chakra all around him. “My lightning.”

“Not badly. When you’re topped off and crackling, it’s more difficult, but it’s fine right now. Like I said, you’re tired… let me get some food in you and treat your wounds and then you can go back to sleep.”

“No drugs this time.”

“No drugs this time,” Owl agrees peaceably. He gently pulls him to his feet; Kakashi sighs.

Owl leads him to the bathroom and sits on the edge of the tub, unzipping his flak vest and setting it carefully aside as Kakashi brushes his teeth twice to get the taste in his mouth out. He realizes as he’s doing so that he’s hungry enough to be dizzy and nauseous at the same time.

“Here. Sit down before you fall down.” Owl helps him steady himself on the edge of the tub and starts re-cleaning his wounds--he’d done it when he’d come home, but then he’d fallen asleep in just his boxers a day and a half ago and they’re probably gross and have lint in them now. Owl’s hands are sure and impersonally caring; the ebb and flow of his chakra around Kakashi lulls him into a half asleep state as Owl wipes him down with a wet washcloth and heals the worst of his injuries--a gash low on his flank and a burn on his shoulder. The rest are just sundry scrapes and nicks and will heal on their own. His hands are gentlest on his face, wiping away the blood from Obito’s eye.

“Stay here. Your clothes?”

“Third, second, first drawer. Mind the trap on the second.”

Owl nods and gets up; he leaves his chakra behind somehow, and Kakashi prods at it curiously. He’s never heard of anyone being able to detach themselves from their aura, so he’s not sure what this is in retrospect. He’s tempted to open the Sharingan to see things properly, but keeps his eye closed--he gets the impression Owl would be mightily displeased at him if he passed out.

“It’s like reading the echoes in a cave,” Owl says as he comes back into the bathroom; Kakashi squints at him a little even as he accepts a stack of folded clothes from him.

“Did you feel me poking at it?” he asks as he gets dressed.

“Yes,” Owl says serenely. “But, as I said, it’s like reading echoes--the chakra landscape has parts one can project one’s ‘voice’ onto as well.” His voice has gone pedantic, teaching; he makes a ticking motion with his finger, plotting trajectories. “I’m over there, but I can bounce my voice to here.”

“Oh. That’s… very clever.”

“Thank you. Come on; I brought food.”

It’s rice and miso soup with eggplant and Owl makes jasmine tea and reads the extremely quizzical look Kakashi gives him when he comes back out of the kitchen; he sets down the teapot and two cups and says, “Horse told me what would be accepted. I may by judging you a little with the eggplant” as he performs a small jutsu to detect basic poisons, illuminating the formerly-covered bowls he’d brought the food in. None of them react and that’s enough for Kakashi today; if Owl wanted him dead, he had Horse and Cat knowing he was here and plenty of missed opportunities behind him.

He says thank you and digs in; Owl pours them tea and sits across from him, back to the kitchen, and drinks his in silence. Both of them ignore the notepad sitting on the corner of the table. The rice and soup are still warm. Kakashi eats all of it and drinks four cups of tea, three in quick succession at the end, and pushes down the thought that the food was recently homemade to look at later.

“Leave the dishes; I’ll wash them. Bed,” Owl almost orders and trails him to the bedroom, lingering outside the door.

“Are you staying, or…?” Kakashi asks as he walks away from him, before his nerve fails him. Better to get it over with while half-numb.

He can practically hear Owl’s curious headtilt, but he says, “In the apartment” without a pause, which Kakashi mentally thanks him for. He's never been good at speaking out loud, and he doesn't think he'll be able to start now.

“Fine. Help yourself to anything. Books are in the shelf; you know where the tea is; snacks are in the cabinet over from that one.”

He feels Owl’s smile in his chakra; the sensation of sunshine in the water against his skin increases.

“I do keep a promise,” Kakashi says in response.

“Of course. Sleep well. I’ll be close by.”

Kakashi flops on his bed and drags the sheets over him and pushes the comfort he takes in that last statement down to be analyzed later as well.


	9. Chapter 9

He only wakes up once, and it’s to the soft _click_ of his window ward opening and the soft murmur of voices. He stays awake long enough to identify the intruder as Gai-as-Horse and for Owl’s chakra to ripple reassuringly around him before he falls asleep again.

The next time he wakes up, the sun’s just set and his internal clock has recalibrated itself. He’s slept surprisingly well for a post-mission drugless slumber, and he squints suspiciously at the feeling of Owl’s chakra around him with one eye.

“Was it your fault?” he mutters at it, though mostly to himself, then experimentally _pings_ Owl’s chakra echo-projection with a bit of his own, curious to see what would happen.

The result is a sort of audio-visual chakra version of a crystal exploding in slow motion as it’s overloaded with sound-light; the small bit of his chakra _rings_ Owl’s like a massive bell, lighting it ablaze with beams of purest, vibrating light that resonate and expose the path of echoes the projection had taken. It’s so vibrant that, for an instant, Kakashi can see it with his normal eye. It would probably be blinding to the Sharingan, and, apparently, is also too bright for chakra sensors; Kakashi hears Owl curse in surprise out in the living room and a thump as he drops something.

A handful of seconds later, Owl pokes his head into his bedroom, an aura of long-suffering exasperation around him.

“I’d ask how you did that, but I’m getting the sinking feeling that you just poked it to see what would happen--so I’ll spare myself the headache,” he says in an aggravated manner. “Good evening, Kakashi. How are you feeling?”

“Couldn’t you answer the question yourself?” Kakashi asks curiously, waving a hand at Owl’s chakra aura still around him, rippling as though a high wind were whipping the surface of its ‘pool’.

“I could, but first off, that’s not very polite since you’re sitting right there and perfectly capable of giving me an answer. Secondly, since you are capable of speaking for yourself, I would just be facilitating your laziness if I didn’t let you speak. And third--no, I can’t, because whatever _idiot stunt_ you just pulled with my chakra shorted out my chakra sight--I have the equivalent of a massive sunglare in my eyes and can’t see a damn thing until it fades.” Owl continues to glower.

“Sounds inconvenient,” Kakashi quips mildly, smothering his amusement; Owl throws up his hands in exasperation.

“Why do I even try,” he deadpans, then snaps, “That was a _rhetorical question_ , please don’t provide me an answer.” Kakashi shuts his mouth. “Just answer the actual question.”

“I thought you told me not to answer--” Kakashi sniggers at the pointed glare Owl throws him and acquiesces. “Tired, chakra still lower than ideal, but… better. What did Horse and Cat say?”

“Clean up and come eat something; I’ll tell you.”

Owl disappears down the hall, and Kakashi stretches languidly and takes the opportunity afforded by his absence to do some furious thinking as he gets up. Neither Horse nor Cat had tried to check on him this time--a good thing, as he’d reflexively hurt both of them in the past while coming down off the jags of a mission.

Instead, they’d _both_ elected to send Owl.

Owl, who’d used his ridiculous chakra abilities to calm him, sense his condition, mood, actions. Owl, who had managed to talk him down, bring him off the knife’s edge brink, and who hadn’t been kicked out yet. Kakashi’d nearly done it as well, had moved to dismiss him and retreat, and Owl had _played_ him, drawn him back out with the deliberate ruffling to his notepad and his words--he could see it now, with a full night’s sleep between him and the event, and have a rueful appreciation of the maneuver. A test, for both of them: Kakashi to see if he’d fall into violence and Owl to see if he could _stop_ him--risky and _defiant_.

 _So he stands up to me for my own good_ , Kakashi thinks ruefully, rubbing at his face. He’s made it all the way into the bathroom, and he takes the moment to look at the Sharingan in the mirror, making sure nothing’s off about it. His chakra shudders at the pull, and Owl’s chakra, still lingering around him, ripples disapprovingly. Kakashi says aloud to it, absently, as he searches red depths, “Calm down; it’s fine. I’m just making sure all my goods are intact”; he closes his eye and it subsides. _Who’s supposed to be whose touchstone here?_ he adds to the earlier thought as he starts to brush his teeth.

Owl, who stands up to him and yells at him and who’s made him food and disarmed himself willingly, putting himself at Kakashi’s tender mercies. Owl, who fights and laughs and became a hunter to remember those left behind and those that had gone, to keep those who would die alone from going blind into the deep night. Kakashi suddenly, fiercely hopes that Owl is beloved in his life outside ANBU--a man with a heart as kind as his should be remembered, rewarded a thousand times over. He knows logically he probably isn’t--because he’s ANBU and no-one should know--but it doesn’t make the feeling retreat. (Though, Kakashi gets the feeling that Owl wouldn’t want the entire village to know. He’d become a hunter because he’d known that he could help, not because he wanted the attention. That makes Kakashi smile, just a little.)

It isn’t until he’s walking down the hall to the living room that it hits him, the details of his reactions and his thoughts falling together in realization, and he nearly misses a step, his chakra plummeting quiet in response to his shock. Owl’s openly worried voice calls out his name from the living room, but Kakashi has to ignore it, just for this moment, as he processes.

He’s in love with Owl.

He’s in love with Owl, or at least an idea of Owl, and how pathetic that, that he’s fallen for a man he barely knows, that barely knows him; but he’s in love with his thoughtfulness, his temper, his sass and sharp tongue and the way that he knows what Kakashi really means when he says stupid things instead of what he actually wants to say. His mind spools ahead of him for one, brilliant moment, tracing out a life where he knows all of whom Owl is, a life together with him, getting to hear him laugh because of something he’s said, waking up together and going upon their separate lives during the day with the warmth of their morning suffusing their lives, being able to feel his chakra close and comforting around him and knowing that he doesn’t have to be the all-powerful Copy-nin, the Master of a Thousand Jutsu around him, doesn’t have to be strong all the time and can just be… him. Kakashi. Imperfect and more than a little broken and afraid to let anyone close anymore because he has too many ghosts haunting him, too much blood splattered on him, and too many cut threads strangling him silent for any more. He can’t. He can’t…

 

He walks out into the living room, sits down with his back to the hall, and says, “I shouldn’t be your touchstone anymore.”

 

The look Owl is giving him changes somehow, unidentifiably, and the hunter hands him a cup of tea. “That’s bullshit and I’m not giving you up.”

 

Kakashi accepts the cup automatically even as some stupid part of his head notices that Owl’s barely wearing anything by ANBU standards, stripped out of all his gear besides his shirt, pants, and mask. His sandals are, weirdly, sitting underneath the window. “... What?” he manages numbly.

“I’m not letting you run away,” Owl enunciates crisply. He takes a sip from his cup. “Last night, you asked me ‘why the fuck I was doing this’. I knew you meant my offer with that--” And here, he tilts his head at the notepad still sitting innocently, untouched, in the corner of the table “--and I chose to answer the broader question. So now I’ll tell you _why_ I did it.

“I may have a pool of silence in me deep enough to drown in, but I think that _you’ve_ buried so many horror-filled rooms below that you can’t grow anything but bones in your fields anymore. You tell people that there’s no house, that you live footloose and fancy-free, and all they see is the scarecrow standing alone in the middle of empty, tilled fields during harvest season and they shrug and move on--but there _is_ a house. It’s just below the ground, hidden underneath the underneath.

“And that’s a fine disguise, but scarecrows are immobile, rooted down, and can’t move--they can’t avoid attacks when they come, no matter how obvious they are. You’ve tied yourself down so well to that hidden house that you can’t move forward anymore for the weight. Cat and Horse and the Hokage know that--because they see you in those times after you try to dodge, trying to avoid the next burden swinging towards you. You break both your ankles in the process and keep going anyway and they worry and assign touchstones to you because they _care_ and can see the white of your bones in all the mess of red.

“And it never works because your touchstones never know where to look--they pluck at your clothes and look in your pockets and wander off into the fields searching for the things that are different. And you go on your merry way without them, and eventually they give up.” Kakashi makes a valiant attempt towards emotion, indignation, anger, coldness, and freezes at the glare Owl pins him with, the glint of his dark eyes behind his mask intent and the press of his chakra around them as hot as an onsen.

“Do you know what I see when I look at you, Kakashi? I see a man that I thought was a legend, a hero, flawless and strong against all obstacles. I see a man that I thought was arrogant and distant and untouchable, beyond anything that the rest of the shinobi, the village, could know. I thought you didn’t care because you _couldn’t_ care, because anything that wasn’t a mission was below you and not worth your full regard.” Owl looks away, down into his teacup. “... and I was so angry and astonished and _confused_ when you offered to be my touchstone, because how could _you_ , of all people, see that I needed it? And I came here after my mission and expected to be ridiculed or interrogated, and instead you served me tea and let me say only what I wanted to and told me stories about the bones plucked from the earth beneath your unmoving feet. And I left knowing that I was wrong and had _been_ wrong all this time. And after, when I saw you again…” His fingers tighten on his cup and something that Kakashi realizes with astonishment is _sympathy_ and furious frustration at himself and sadness fills Owl’s voice, thickens his accent noticeably Mist. “I realized that I couldn’t tell at _all_. That you’d been hiding behind that mask for so long that even those who _knew_ couldn’t tell.” He roughly shoves his mask far enough away from his face to slide a hand underneath; his fingers come back wet and Kakashi realizes with mortification and guilt that Owl is _crying_ for him. “Me, who became a hunter to help, didn’t, _couldn’t_ see how few threads our most-famous, _obvious_ shinobi _really_ had, couldn’t see underneath the underneath for his own preconceived, idiotic opinions.”

Owl sniffs once, thick and sort of disgusting and achingly _human_ , and says, “When I look at you, I see someone that everyone talks about and that no-one, not even the ANBU, really knows. I see someone strong and willing to give up _everything_ for those he loves and willing to die lonely for the sake of duty and the village’s reputation. I see someone that’s been too much a soldier, a genius, and not enough _himself_ , who wears others’ expectations of him as a mask and who’s afraid to let anyone close anymore because he thinks they’ll go running at all the bones in the fields and that he wouldn’t be able to survive any more loss. Well. I’ll tell you the last is because you’re so emotionally repressed that you’re _brittle_. That’s not healthy, you know.” Kakashi does a full-body twitch at that, and Owl laughs self-deprecatingly before he continues. “I can feel you starting to thaw from your stalled thought process, so I’ll say this one last thing before you collect yourself enough to zap me--I went to the Hokage after I talked to Cat.” And Kakashi is one-hundred percent sure that Owl is outright laughing now through his tears. “And I got her to agree to make _me **your**_ touchstone. So. It’s official now--you really are stuck with me.”

And Owl, the utter and complete _asshole_ , has the gall to stand up after that, slide away his mask just enough to expose his mouth, and kiss him on his left cheek, taking advantage of his blind side. He’s across the room, perched on the windowsill, before Kakashi can blink or even _start_ formulating a response to that, vaguely congealing thoughts scattered once again at the action; he gives him a cheeky wave, his sandals in his other hand--and tumbles backwards out of the window into the night, leaving Kakashi alone.

Well.

Not completely alone--the thread of chakra he’d tied to Kakashi via the kiss thrums warm between them with the echoes of his laughter and tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _iruka, you little shit,,,_
> 
> it's funny though, because i went into this chapter thinking it was going to be something different and it turned out like this... happy friday, everyone; have mutual idiots being idiots at each other.


	10. Chapter 10

His first coherent thought is, shamefully, _I am going to strangle Tenzo_ instead of anything resembling processing or damage control. His next looks a lot like panic, and Kakashi raises a hand to rub at the spot Owl had kissed. He tells himself the little spark-tingle it does at the touch of his fingers and chakra is his overactive imagination, really, and isn’t sure how convinced his is by his own argument.

Fucking hell. He has to take a moment to admire the sheer balls an act like that takes, though--not just admitting that you’d been wrong, but admitting it to that person’s _face_ and effectively flipping them the bird at the same time. Stubborn Owl. Kakashi exhales explosively and scrubs both hands through his hair--and then downs his cup of cold tea (and Owl’s too, for good measure) before going to investigate the kitchen.

The covered bowls are back; Kakashi lifts the top of one and peers inside--rice, rolled omelette, leafy green vegetables of some sort. The other is more miso, and Kakashi can’t help but sigh and chuckle at the same time.

He eats and casts out his chakra senses as he does; he finds three familiar points clustered on a rooftop a discreet distance away. He debates being angry at them (Kakashi is sure that both Gai and Tenzo had advised Owl) and discards the idea as ultimately petty.

He wonders if he’s in shock. He’s finally at a loss, Sharingan Kakashi stumped by a challenge. He could try to cut himself loose from Owl, but the hunter has already proven himself remarkably stubborn--as well as extremely perceptive. Owl had only needed a few words to unlock his entire soul, and he's never felt so safe or vulnerable.

And maybe that was part of the problem--for all that he wants to push Owl away to spare his heart, there's a part of him equal (or greater) in strength that wants him to stay. Not just because he was in love with aspects of him--but because Owl had seen him and knew him and done this ridiculous, stupid, _dangerous_ thing anyway.

He washes the dishes this time. Then makes more tea. Sits down at the table and pulls the notepad over to him and sets his hands on it and takes a bracing breath.

Kakashi sends a spark of himself down the line of Owl’s chakra, chiming it soft. It doesn’t light up this time, but he can feel it resonate; he waits one, two long heartbeats, and a pulse of chakra flares at his window.

“Come in. I’m okay," he calls out, and Owl opens the frame and sits in it, unlacing his sandals and setting them below it before sliding in and shutting the window after him. There’s a wad of damp tissue in his hand, and he lobs it at the garbage can on the other side of the couch, making the shot, then stands still, waiting.

“Come sit down,” Kakashi says; Owl complies and accepts the cup of tea Kakashi hands him. “... thank you for giving me that breathing room.”

Owl flickers the impression of a smile at him. “It seemed the nice thing to do.” His voice is a little raspy, roughened by tears, but he seems otherwise composed; Kakashi risks sending a tendril of chakra back down the line Owl’d left and checking, just to confirm.

His ‘fingers’ are seized in a warm grip, the impression of someone else’s digits lacing through with his, and the sensation of smiling increases.

It’s not uncomfortable at all, and Kakashi relaxes a little.

“Your offer,” he begins, and lifts one hand from the notepad. “...I can’t promise I’ll be rational about the rest, but you... can help with the ones from the last mission.” _Should probably help._ Kakashi hesitates for only a second before lifting his other hand from the notepad and pushing it across the table at Owl.

The hunter--no, his _touchstone_ , as weird as it feels to actually reveal something meaningful to his official touchstone for once--lifts his gaze from his cup, to Kakashi’s face, to the notepad, and back down to the cup before looking again at Kakashi’s face.

“Okay,” he says softly, and sets his tea aside to pick up the notepad, flipping it open directly to the beginning of the list Kakashi had gained from the last mission. Kakashi waits, playing with his cup, as Owl flips pages, the silence a little tense on his part but otherwise comfortable.

“I can help you deliver some of these,” is all that Owl says in the end; he sets the notepad down, closes it, but keeps it on his side of the table. Kakashi feels no protective need to retrieve it and that, of everything that’s he’s done or thought since Owl left after his declaration, convinces him he’s making the right choice. “I’m in the village off missions more than you are and have more free time and vacation days racked up.” Owl laughs quietly, a little sheepishly. “And I think people would be relieved if I took them. I can deliver some of these messages--and I think that if I did it, they’d have a better chance of getting through. Hunter-nin aren’t stopped by people trying to collect their bingo book bounties.” His _if you’ll let me do this_ isn’t spoken aloud, just gently implied, but Kakashi delays his response for a moment in favor of his sharpened interest.

“You have a stable job?” Kakashi questions.

Owl--well, his _chakra_ blushes, heating up a little, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell otherwise--and says, “Trust you to latch onto the one thing I accidentally let slip.” He sighs and does that almost-ponytail-pulling movement before lowering his hand. “Yes, I have a steady job.” He gives Kakashi a deeply regretful look. “I hate this part of it, just so you know; I forgot about it until I’d already talked to the Hokage. I know who you are on both sides of the coin, but you have no idea and I can’t tell you no matter how much I want to.”

Kakashi can’t help but give him a small reassuring smile and a squeeze of his chakra. “It’s fine--maybe I’ll just figure it out on my own. I _have_ heard I’m a genius.” He startles a laugh out of Owl, which makes his own smile warmer. “And… yes. I would appreciate the help.”

“Ah,” Owl breathes; Kakashi knows he realizes the enormity of what he’s just done--his smile goes a little lopsided, a little regretful, as he adds to his earlier statement.

“I’m afraid I don’t have the first idea of how to start disassembling the house underneath my feet--so I’ll trust in you to help me in that.”

“Oh… Kakashi…” _Thank you_ , he doesn’t say; instead, he quips brightly, “The first part is fairly simple--it’s just like picking stones from the field to plow and plant seeds” which startles a helpless snort out of Kakashi’s nose.

“I honestly can’t believe you used that metaphor,” he laughs. “ _I_ didn’t even stoop to the forest analogy and here you go making comments with a serious face about fields and scarecrows.”

“Hey, cut me some slack; I didn’t prepare what I said beforehand!” Owl splutters back, though he’s laughing as well. “God, I wanted to punch _myself_ in the face after I realized what I’d said, but I had to run with it at that point and not think about how I sounded like a protagonist from one of Jiraya’s novels.”

Kakashi dissolves into a fresh bout of laughter at that, making the comparison and finding it hilariously apt. “‘ _Oh please, shepard-san, plow my bountiful fields!_ ’” he manages in a breathy alto, the highest his voice can go, and Owl _howls_ with laughter at it, gasping for air.

“Oh god, oh god; okay, please--never, ever use that voice again, or I really will pass out from laughing too hard, I’m serious,” Owl wheezes. He makes a motion as if to wipe his watering eyes, encounters his mask, and shifts it to complete the action.

“I wouldn’t have guessed you’d read any Icha Icha, Owl,” Kakashi remarks. “Color me surprised.”

“Isn’t it something that everyone reads or tries to read at least once? Just to see what all the fuss is about?” Kakashi shrugs, and Owl laughs again. “Maybe it’s just that most people don’t read it so publically, Kakashi.”

”Pshhh, nonsense. It’s a classic. People admit to reading books like that tale from Water Country--what is it, the one with the white whale… _Moby Dick_? Anyway, they admit to reading those all the time. Why not Icha Icha?”

Owl laughs again, seeing the wry joke for what it is, and then says, “Well, I have to admit, Icha Icha is certainly more… earthily engaging. I’m enjoying _Summer Blossoms_ more than it at the moment, though--”

Kakashi’s ears metaphorically perk. “ _Summer Blossoms_ as well, Owl? You continue to surprise.”

“Ah well--yes, a copy recently fell into my hands and you were still asleep, so…” He shrugs, then holds up a hand. “Dont even start; I haven’t finished it yet and I want to find out if Mimi-chan gets together with Tetsuo-kun or Yuki-san myself, thanks.” Kakashi closes his mouth, a little disappointed that he’d been so neatly thwarted, and Owl’s chakra gives his a little squeeze and starts… swinging? It feels something like walking down the street holding hands, and Kakashi snorts very softly at the thought even as he squeezes back.

“Horse and Cat?” he asks before he can get too caught up in the feeling; Owl does the audible blink thing again.

“What about them--oh, what they had to say? Ah… just a report from the Hokage.” The swinging stops, and Owl makes a sad, quiet little noise. “The boy your team brought back died. He was too weak from all that time in the lab… the girl is alright, though, and is as stable as can be expected at this point.”

“Oh,” Kakashi says, and the guilt suddenly slams into him so hard it feels like he’s been punched in the gut. “I was _sleeping_ \--fuck--” He fumbles at the notepad across the table, and Owl quickly hands it to him, producing a pen from god-knows-where and sitting in faintly concerned silence as Kakashi flips to a clean page and starts jotting down everything he remembers about the boy, scribbling in hasty, mangled shorthand meant for his eyes only, writing for long paragraphs, the nib of the pen catching occasionally in the paper; he continues unbroken until his mania plays itself out with the end of his memories and then sets down the pen and closes his eye and doesn’t flinch when Owl shifts to gently put his hand between his shoulder blades and start rubbing soothing circles, his actions projected loudly enough for his ears to hear.

“... I just remembered that everything in there is in my shorthand. I’m an idiot,” Kakashi finally says, voice pained. “I’m sorry, I--”

“Shh… it’s fine, Kakashi. I appreciated it anyway. And I’ve deciphered enough of your shorthand over the years to be able to catch bits of what you’d written. Don’t worry about it.” It’s silent between them for long moments, Owl’s hand eventually slowing its circles to slide down to rest briefly at the small of Kakashi’s back before withdrawing completely. He’d miss it if Owl’s chakra wasn’t pressed close around him again.

“I’ll translate it out of moonspeak gibberish before I give it to you to deliver,” Kakashi eventually says, and Owl exhales slowly, letting a hint of sunshine creep into the water.

“Thank you,” he says.

Another gentle silence wells between them, and Kakashi is the one to break it again.

“I need to visit the Memorial Stone--I haven’t for too long. You should go as well.. I’ve kept you here for too long.”

“Ah. Alright. Don’t forget to reconnect with your living memories as well.”

Kakashi barks out a rough laugh before he can help himself. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

He can almost feel the frown on Owl’s face. “Gai, for one. Tenzo. Sakura is still around. And Naruto may be gone, but… his first sensei is still in the village. Maybe you should ask him if he’s heard anything from the boy.”

“I _highly doubt_ Umino-sensei would appreciate my inquiries,” Kakashi replies dryly.

“Well, you’ll never know until you try,” Owl shoots back way too cheerfully for the magnitude of his suggestion. Kakashi gives him a terribly skeptical look, which he apparently ignores.

“Alright, alright, I’ll take it under consideration. Now get dressed and get out; I’m sure you need to sleep.” Kakashi pushes himself to his feet and stretches. “Don’t forget to take your dishes as well.”

“Okay okay, I’m going; no need to make it sound so sordid,” Owl grumbles at him; he wanders off to fetch his vest and belt pouches and thigh pouches and gloves and the kitchen sink, et cetera, as Kakashi begins to disentangle himself from Owl’s chakra. It gives him a last, reluctant squeeze and unwinds itself from him, leaving Kakashi feeling a little bereft and alone in his own skin. Owl comes back into the living room, zipping up his flak vest, and turns his eyes back to Kakashi.

“When should I come back for--” He makes a motion at the notepad. Kakashi frowns at him.

“Shouldn’t you make sure you can get time off first?” That’s what responsible people with steady jobs did, right? He wouldn’t know, but that’s what he figured, since the characters in his romance novels always made it out to be such a big deal whenever they were late because of the other characters.

“Humor me, Kakashi.”

He racks through names in his head, finding one that would be a short trip to a town on the border; he cross-estimates it with how much time it would take for Owl based off his rescue and previous missions before saying reluctantly, “Four days.”

“Okay. I’ll see you at sundown in four days, then.” Owl gives him that sensation of smiling, and Kakashi sighs, but nods.

“Until then, Owl.”

“Until then, Kakashi. Don’t forget to sleep.”

Owl disappears silently out into the night, and Kakashi tracks his progress for about a block before letting him go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> iruka, you are not being very subtle with trying to hide who you are this point :"|


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MIGHTY APOLOGIZES FOR THE LATENESS AND LENGTH OF THIS CHAPTER; I got a bit stuck on a point in the plot and decided to stall until I got it sorted out. On the bright side, now that it's decided, I'm halfway through writing Chapter 12, so there should be another update sometime this week!

In the light of the morning, it’s easy to pretend that last night didn’t happen.

Kakashi wakes up deliciously late and enjoys every minute of sleeping in. He’s never been a morning person and becoming a shinobi hasn’t done anything for that--he doesn’t know how Gai manages to get up for his ridiculous morning workouts, especially when it’s after missions as Horse.

So yeah, it would be easy to pretend last night didn’t happen--the question that Kakashi ponders all through cleaning out his fridge, making lunch, feeding the ninkin, and watering Mister Ukki is whether or not he _should_.

He visits the Memorial, sitting at the base ‘round back from all the names as he leans against the black stone, and stares at the sky with his fingers laced together, forearms propped up on his knees.

“Dear Sensei,” he says as though composing a letter (he laughs at the thought. Well. It’s not so ill-fitting.) “Today I, Sharingan Kakashi, the Copy Nin, Master of a Thousand Jutsus, and your stubborn student, managed to be surprised.” He can imagine Minato’s bark of laughter, the glimmer of amusement in his sensei’s eye in response, the words he would say:

“ _You_? Surely that’s a sign of the apocalypse. So, is the world ending in my absence?”

Kakashi snorts. “Not really. Just one of the ANBU doing something that I didn’t predict. No, I’m not hurt; don’t worry.”

The amusement would disappear, and the mirth would smooth out into something more serious. “So why are you telling me? You must be a little hurt in some way--otherwise you wouldn’t be gossiping to me like this.”

“My, my.” He unlinks his fingers from one another and runs a hand through his hair. “I wouldn’t say _hurt_ … just a little, ah…”

“Off-balance? Unsure? Confused?” Kakashi makes a soft noise of denial or exasperation, and Minato’s laugh is rueful and heartbreaking. “Why is it that you can get eviscerated and not blink an eye, but the minute someone does something you’re not emotionally steeled against, you fall apart like this?”

“I guess I’m just too much a shinobi,” and Kakashi can’t _stand_ that look on Minato’s face, because it’s pity and worry and regret rolled all into one; Minato had always wanted to help him, _save him_ somehow, and had always felt like he’d come in, realized everything too late for anything but damage control. He might have even been right.

“I suppose so,” he says back, and Kakashi manages a smile despite the weight on both of them. “You always did come to me for help on these matters.”

“Teacher knows best~” Kakashi singsongs back, and that gets a laugh out of Minato at least. “Owl. He made himself my touchstone.”

Minato’s eyes widen as the words sink in--and he laughs suddenly, expression gleeful. “Oh, you’re _serious_? What a crafty man! I hope you haven’t harmed Tenzo for that.”

“Not _yet_ ,” he returns darkly. “But the day’s still young. So what should I do about Owl?”

Minato is silent for a long time, giving him a considering look (Kakashi never questions why his mental image of him is always like this--not the Hokage from the night of the Kyuubi’s attack, not the sensei who’d taught him when their three-man team had been intact, but pseudo-vulnerable in the time in between both, remembered from those occasions when he’d managed to coax a younger Kakashi in from the cold and into the warmth of his and Kushina’s home for a hot meal and tea that he’d helped made for his own mental security), and then he says, quietly, “How many more levels have you built? How many more pages have you filled?”

Kakashi’s silent, and Minato’s eyes soften.

“He offered to help, didn’t he? Did you reject it?”

“... no. I didn’t.”

“Then I think you answered your own question.”

Minato smiles and it makes him ache, makes his throat tighten and his chest constrict.

“I miss all of you,” Kakashi says, the words slipping from him before he can close his mouth.

“I know,” Minato replies, then adds, “Don’t hurry along, Kakashi. We can wait.”

“Of course,” he sighs, and closes his eye, lets the memories go, and rubs up the bridge of his nose over to his temple. “What easy words I say.”

He still says hello to Rin and Obito and Hiruzen before rising and brushing grass off of himself to leave.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> before we get started, credit where credit is due! [end1essly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/end1essly/pseuds/end1essly) has joined me as my beta and general sounding board for 'notes'; thank you very much for helping me with chapter 11 and chapter 12 (and putting up with my yelling on twitter), end1essly!

He’d try to track down Tenzo if he wasn’t 70% sure that his former subordinate would still be sleeping. His kohai had probably had patrol last night on top of Owl’s shenanigans, and since it was closer to noon than sunset, he’d still be asleep.

Kakashi visits Iruka again instead before his brain can catch up to the rest of him and tell him it’s a bad idea. He finds Iruka on the tail-end of lunch, the teacher ensconced in the staff lounge with an empty bento box at his elbow and his head bent over a pile of papers in front of him. He’s grading them, mouthing words to himself with a slight furrow to his brows as he attempts to decipher the writer’s intended meaning--occasionally, he’ll make an X or a check or write a note in the margin. Kakashi briefly debates making a flashy entrance and startling the teacher, but eventually decides against it, given that he’s sort of asking Iruka for a favor in the first place (and because he’s rather fond of all his body parts).

Instead, he saunters over and knocks on the table Iruka’s sitting at.

Iruka looks up, a mingled question and exasperated annoyance in his gaze, before he realizes who’s standing there before him; his brows compress further in confusion and he sets down his fountain pen (the nib is practically dyed purple; that one must be his dedicated grading pen) to put his hands, palms down, on the table.

“Can I help you, Kakashi-sensei?” he asks politely. “Lunch break is almost over, so if you could make this quick...”

Kakashi ignores the whispers and glances he can feel from the other teachers on break, and eye-smiles down at Iruka instead, tilting his head to one side.

“This is probably a bit sudden, but Umino-sensei--have you gotten any messages from Naruto?”

Iruka blinks up at him, then frowns a little. “Yes. But…” His gaze drops from Kakashi’s for a moment to focus elsewhere as a slight flush colors his cheeks, before flicking back up to look again. “That’s a bit private. Why do you want to know?”

“My, my, no need to be suspicious of me.” Kakashi holds up a hand and waves it a little self-consciously as if to dispel the notion. “It’s just that I haven’t gotten anything from the kid, so I was wondering if you had…?”

Iruka’s eyes widen and genuine surprise crosses his features. “Noth--you’re telling me that Naruto hasn’t sent you _anything_?” The chunin’s face darkens when Kakashi nods in an affirming manner, and Kakashi blinks in confusion. “I am going to give that idiot a piece of my _mind_ when he gets back--” And there’s Iruka’s famous temper flaring… (Kakashi has to admit, it’s nice to have it on _his_ side for once instead of leveled _at_ him.)

A loud ringing splits the air, and Kakashi tenses for a second, startled, until he remembers where he is--this lunch period is ending. Iruka catches his eye as he stands and starts gathering his things, and the teacher looks determined now instead of angry.

“I’ll meet you at your apartment at four-forty,” Iruka says. “Be there, on time, and I won’t have to assign you a mission that involves Grass Country in rainy season.” Kakashi winces internally--not an idle threat; the mosquitoes that breed in Grass Country in the constant standing water during that time can get as big as Bisuke. Externally, Kakashi flips Iruka a languid sort of salute as the teacher packs his stuff to join the other staff members filtering out of the lounge.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Kakashi replies.

Iruka gives him a sort of suspicious look--that turns into a surprisingly sweet smile at whatever he sees in Kakashi’s face.

“Okay. See you then, Kakashi-sensei.”

* * *

Four-forty still isn’t enough time for Tenzo to be up and Kakashi decides to forgo hunting down Gai just in case he gets roped into another challenge. The question is, then, what to do with the time in between.

A number of options present themselves to him, but Kakashi eventually sighs and gets started on his mission reports. Report _s_. Multiple reports that he’s responsible for. S-class and A-class missions have their own Archives--that are kept under constant guard at Hokage Tower, locked up tight and accessible only to a select few in the Hokage’s confidence, as well as guarded by some very nasty traps and jutsus that are relics of the Second Shinobi World War. Not to say anything about the ANBU guards on top of that (and Kakashi remembers Archive duty being boring as _hell_ \--except when it wasn’t. They’d tried to keep damage to a minimum, _honest_ , but thieves were always really skilled if they were ballsy enough to rob those Archives, and sometimes there was collateral architectural damage.)

A-rank and S-rank got a ‘cover sheet’ for the normal Archives--an innocuous-looking mission report written in code that referenced what the actual mission had contained in terms of individuals and jutsu just in case cross referencing to an active mission was necessary. Kakashi didn’t know how many lives that system had saved--but it was especially invaluable in treating the inevitable aftermath of missions that had been under-ranked, when shinobi found themselves facing nin or techniques that they shouldn’t have encountered and managed to survive long enough to end up in the medics’ hands.

Unfortunately, this meant that Kakashi had to write twice the number of mission reports and make two separate trips to deliver them--one to the mission desk and one directly to the Hokage’s hands.

He works on the one for Tsunade’s eyes first because the code they use for the cover mission reports gives him a headache--he’ll pencil it out first and then ink it. There was no way in hell he was going to be happy about rewriting the thing due to misremembering a phrase and implying there’d been a few murders of crows instead of Sound backup. At least he’d gotten out of the official report from the mission where Owl had come to fetch him; passing out and ending up on bedrest and thus incapable of writing was an acceptable excuse for the Hokage to file a rough copy of the report you would have turned in for you.

Kakashi gets up once at four PM to make himself another pot of tea and to tidy a little bit in anticipation of Iruka’s arrival. Kakashi takes a moment, standing in the doorway of his kitchen, to wonder what the teacher would think of his apartment. Steaming teapot in hand, he tries to look at his home through the eyes of a stranger--the place is perhaps surprisingly appealing and warm for a shinobi of his reputation: Kakashi favors wooden furniture, stained dark, and worn, soft textures. There’s carpet in the living room in a dark shade, crushed flat and shiny from years of occupation; his couch looks on the comfortable side of ‘worn-in-until-falling-apart’ and is home to several extra cushions and a forest-green, knitted throw blanket (it had been a birthday gift from Gai); the only things that display his supposed eccentricities are the lack of things hanging on the walls and the weird _openness_ of the apartment, bordering on minimalistic. Everything is pushed back against or as near to a wall as it can be and the exposed, created space against the neutral emptiness of the walls makes the place weirdly cavernous, despite it not being that much extra room.

Kakashi sighs, sets down the teapot, and goes to dust his bookshelves and pick up the few things that’ve somehow managed to end up on the floor despite his best efforts (he does try to keep the place neat, if for no other reason than because he doesn’t want to trip and fall on his face coming back braindead from a mission at night.) Then he gets back to his mission report and blinks in honest surprise what feels like a few minutes later at a knock at his door.

He glances at his clock and realizes it’s four fifty; he looks down at his mission report as though betrayed (though mostly because he’s unsure if he’d fallen asleep on it and is looking for drool stains) before tucking it and the notepad on his table away so Iruka wouldn’t see them.

He pulls the bandanna at his neck up over his mouth, absently checks the strip of cloth over his eye that’s substituting for his forehead protector, and grabs a weapons pouch from a shelf in the entryway as he glances through the peephole in his door, senses questing out at the same time to determine who it is that’s knocking on the door. _Just in case. A little healthy paranoia is good for a shinobi, right?_

Luckily for Kakashi, Iruka-sensei really is Iruka-sensei; Kakashi tosses the weapons pouch back onto the shelf and opens the door, disabling the wards and traps on it at the same time.

“Hello Umino-sensei. Please, come in.” He notices (purely for analytical purposes, really!) that the teacher is a little flushed and breathing a bit hard--as though he’d run here at full speed.

“Sorry for being late,” Iruka says as he steps inside; Kakashi catches the glance he makes at the traps connected to the doorframe. They’re still fairly powerful even when inactive, and any shinobi with a modicum of chakra sense can feel them buzzing away at the fringes of their consciousness. “I had a student stay behind to ask me a few questions, and I ended up having to hustle to get Naruto’s things.” He takes off his sandals and puts them neatly in the entryway even as Kakashi starts sauntering off down the hall to the living room.

“My, my, no worries, Umino-sensei. Please, have a seat.” Kakashi drops onto a cushion at the table, back facing the kitchen; Iruka follows him and settles on the sofa after a cursory (though curious) glance about the living room.

Kakashi shifts the teapot and cup still on the table out of the way as Iruka lifts his bag onto his lap; Kakashi watches him in interest as the teacher flips it open and starts rummaging inside.

“I feel like I need to apologize for Naruto before we get started,” Iruka says, and the naked honesty in his gaze when he looks up from his search at Kakashi startles the jonin with its sincerity. “I had no idea Naruto wasn’t sending you anything--” He drops his eyes and blushes red, muttering apparently to himself as he resumes his mysterious activities with his bag, “I’m going to remind that little punk who used to be Konoha’s ultimate prankster when he comes back--and give him a lecture to blister his ears while I have him at my mercy--”

Kakashi barks out a laugh at that, and Iruka startles as though he’d forgotten where he was, eyes darting back up to meet Kakashi’s amused one. The blush deepens in hue, and Iruka splutters, “I--forget I said that; you didn’t hear a thing!” at him.

“My, my, sensei, but does that mean Naruto isn’t still in for one of the most-surprising ‘welcome back’s in Konoha’s recent history?” Kakashi replies, a hidden smile curving his twinkling visible eye.

Iruka huffs in indignation. “Of course he is! I seriously can’t believe he hasn’t sent a single thing; you were his sensei after all!”

Kakashi feels his mouth twist wryly, and his voice reflects its motion even as he pushes away the feelings of regret and guilt that threaten him at the reminder. “Just a _teacher_ , Umino-sensei--you’re _family_ to him.”

Iruka snaps his head up, eyes wide in surprise and fixed on Kakashi’s face; his mouth opens and then closes a few times as Kakashi watches in bemusement, wondering silently what he’d said to cause such a reaction. Iruka doesn’t answer his unspoken question, instead furrowing his brows and looking away, finally starting to pull things out of his bag and setting them on the table. Kakashi trains his eye on them in interest as they emerge and thus completely misses the look Iruka sneaks at him.

“... just because he does doesn’t mean he’s excused for his actions. It’s still inconsiderate,” Iruka murmurs. Kakashi blinks and looks up at the other; Iruka’s rubbing the scar across his nose, and, as Kakashi watches, moves his hand from the mark to run his fingers through his hair, ending with a tug at his ponytail. Kakashi has to stifle the small bubble of wonder and surprise he feels rising in his chest--when was the last time a virtual stranger had stood up for him like that in any subject besides his worth as a shinobi?

“... it’s true,” Iruka says, and this time verges on exasperated and just a touch sulky. “No need to give me that look, Kakashi, sir.”

“Ah.” Kakashi blinks and looks back down at the table and its eclectic collection of objects. “I apologize; it’s fine. I’m sure it just slipped Naruto’s mind. Speaking of…” He waves a languid hand at the table, indicating the whole of it with a roll of his wrist. “... what is all of this?”

“Correspondence from Naruto.” Iruka laughs at the mildly incredulous look Kakashi shoots him. “I know; it just looks like a bunch of crap and twists of paper, but they’re all from him. They come by courier or summon, I think; the most recent ones have been getting through my wards and end up on my kitchen table.” He looks down at the mixture of pretty rocks, shells, dried flowers, postcards, and assorted tourist trap nicknacks on the table with such an obvious fondness and sense of loss that it makes Kakashi, watching him, ache a little with the intensity of the unspoken emotions in Iruka’s eyes.

Kakashi drops his gaze, suddenly feeling like he’s intruding somehow and resisting the urge to tell Iruka-sensei to pack up and go home so he can sit here in his empty apartment and think about Minato-sensei and Obito and Rin in undisturbed silence, and reaches out instead to pick up a hunk of cloudy crystal, unwrapping the twist of paper from around it to read the words written on the slip.

“AM DOING OKAY! I BROKE A HILL TODAY, IRUKA-SENSEI!! A SMALL ONE, BUT THE PERVY-SAGE SAYS I’M GETTING BETTER!” it proclaims in Naruto’s wide, loosely formed capitals. (Kakashi may have only really started learning how to write well when he’d had to start turning in mission reports as the leader of said missions, and his chickenscratch may sometimes only vaguely resemble letters, but he’s pretty sure his handwriting doesn’t _announce_ his personality as blatantly as Naruto’s does--he has no idea how his words take up as much metaphorical paper space as their progenitor does with his volume and energy. Then again, it is Naruto, so he really _shouldn’t_ be so surprised.)

Kakashi replaces the note like he’d found it, setting it down and reaching for another object. This one is a pressed wildflower stuck to something that resembles a notecard in size and texture, and the words around the perimeter read, “EVERYTHING IS SORE, EVEN MY _TONGUE_ , IRUKA. MY _TONGUE_! PERVY-SAGE MADE ME LIFT REALLY REALLY BIG ROCKS TODAY, AND ALL HE DID WAS _WRITE_! HE DIDN’T EVEN WATCH!” Kakashi chuckles and wonders for a moment if Jiraiya had been writing the next installment in Icha Icha before putting the note and object down, picking up a conch shell with a delicately pink and purple interior.

“Is there anything in that teapot?” Iruka asks; Kakashi lifts it with a hand, shaking it absently without looking up from this note. (“PERVY-SAGE TOOK ME ON A ‘RESEARCH’ MISSION TODAY. WE GOT KICKED OUT OF THE ONSEN. I WISH I’D ASKED WHAT SORT OF MISSION IT WAS BEFORE I SAID I’D GO ‘CAUSE THEY HAD REALLY GOOD HOT SPRING EGG RAMEN.”) The lack of sloshing makes him set it down again, and Kakashi gives Iruka a sheepish sort of look as he reassembles and sets aside that item-note combination.

“I’m a terrible host,” he half-jokes at the teacher; his eye drifts back to the notes and objects, revealing his priorities. “Would you like some tea, Iruka-sensei?”

Kakashi doesn’t need to look up to sense Iruka’s amusement at him; he tries to glower at the chunin and just gets flapped at by a hand for his trouble.

“I would love some tea, but don’t bother getting up--I’ll do it. Just keep reading; they’re all like that. And you probably need the laugh, Kakashi-sensei.”

Iruka stands and picks up the teapot, carrying it off with him into the kitchen; Kakashi spares a few brain cells to feel a little chagrined, but it’s quickly buried underneath the desire to make sure his former student isn’t hurt or faring as badly as he’d had before due to Kakashi’s awful teaching. Or that he wasn’t being totally corrupted by Jiraiya’s personality. The _last_ thing the village needs is the creator of the Sexy no Jutsu to become an active pervert.

Part of Kakashi’s brain idly notes the sound of his kettle being filled and the burner igniting but dismisses it as nonthreatening; he turns his attention instead to the next object, a shiny round stone in a pretty shade of soft grey flecked with pink. (“SAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SAKURA FOR ME, IRUKA!”) and by the time he’s worked his way through the rest of them, Iruka’s returned with the teapot and an extra cup.

He fills Kakashi’s empty one automatically, and Kakashi accepts it, feeling a little startled at the gesture. “My, Iruka-sensei, you shouldn’t be so polite towards me. I’ve been quite rude in your visit so far.”

Iruka laughs, and the rich sound warms Kakashi’s chest. “We’re shinobi, Kakashi-sensei; don’t worry so much about manners and conventions--the only ones who care so much are the Hyuuga.”

Kakashi snorts at that and says, half-jokingly, “I’m sure the Hyuuga elders would make even ANBU take off their sandals before entering when delivering a message if they could manage it.” Cat had told him about the death glare one of the said elders had once leveled at him for leaving muddy footprints on the tatami when he’d come with orders from the Hokage, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch. And it makes Iruka laugh again, which is… very nice.

“I don’t know how you managed to survive teaching so many of them--I shudder at the thought of parent-teacher conferences,” Kakashi says in reference to the pale-eyed clan.

Iruka chuckles and looks a little sheepish, rubbing again at the scar across his nose. “Well, they’re kids like any other when they get to me, if a little brattier than the norm--and I’m successful enough in my position that anything that could be construed as an insult that gets past my tact manages to be waved off by the Hokage. I’m not in _too_ much danger of losing my job if I offend one of the parents.”

“You really love teaching them,” Kakashi observes, and smiles as Iruka blushes.

“Yes,” he replies sincerely. “I… the kids mean a lot to me. They give me hope for the future, and I’m proud to have helped shape that potential.”

“Even if they have weapons training?” Kakashi teases, laughing a little at Iruka’s answering groan.

“Please, must you remind me? I haven’t done anything to you that wasn’t undeserved,” Iruka mock-complains.

“The threat of changing my missions was a bit much.”

“I didn’t want to be kept waiting for hours outside your door. It was the second thing that popped into my head that would manage to get you on time.”

Kakashi blinks curiously at Iruka. “And what was the first one?”

“A challenge from Gai. Or _avoiding_ a challenge from Gai,” Iruka admits, and Kakashi bursts into laughter at the rueful expression on Iruka’s face.

“Well… I suppose that’s true,” Kakashi admits. Iruka flashes him a smile for that, the remnants of his flush still clinging to his cheeks, and Kakashi casually picks up his teacup and sips at the contents to cover the entirely-too-intimate smile he wants to make back.

He blinks down at his cup afterwards. Ume blossom tea. Huh. What a coincidence.

“So you said most of these just appear?” Kakashi asks after he sets his cup down, tapping the side of his index finger against a spray of dried blue wildflowers, the note wound around their fragile stems.

Iruka nods as he glances up from his own teacup. “Yep. I’ll wake up or come back home and they’ll be sitting there, obvious.”

“Have you tried to write back?”

Iruka makes a face. “Yes. But my notes don’t get picked up, even if they’re labeled or there was a message from Naruto delivered in the meantime.”

Kakashi muses on that even as he flicks at one of the more risque items on the table; the plastic woman, dressed in some creative pervert’s interpretation of a kunoichi's outfit and clinging to a plastic stripper’s pole in front of her, bobbles her hips with the motion, the very short hem of her ‘kimono’ swaying. The black pedestal she’s standing on has “1000 Nights of Erotic Paradise!” embossed on it in a particularly violent shade of neon pink. Naruto’s note accompanying the item had said, simply, “THIS WAS THE LEAST WEIRD ONE I COULD FIND. THE PERVY-SAGE MADE ME GET YOU A SOUVENIR. I’M NEVER GOING ON A MISSION WITH HIM EVER AGAIN.” The ‘ever’ had been vehemently underlined five times. Kakashi chuckles at the memory and the imagined expression on Naruto’s face as he’d written the note, and Iruka tracks the motion and his line of sight, smiling and snickering as well as the same thought evidently occurs to him.

“Jiraiya and Naruto are likely moving from place to place quite quickly,” Kakashi offers. “And it might not be safe for them to have anything that could tie them overtly to Konoha. He and Jiraiya are strong, but…” Kakashi shrugs apologetically even as Iruka’s lips compress into a line. “It’s probably better to not take the risk, just in case they’re captured or killed.” He pauses, feeling a little obscurely ashamed at being so pragmatic and logical and upsetting the teacher. “Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine… it’s not like the possibility hadn’t occurred to me,” Iruka replies, before sighing heavily and turning his teacup around in his hands, staring into its shallow depths.

They sit in silence for a moment, and Kakashi cushions his chin in one of his hands as he considers Iruka. “I don’t know how you do it,” Kakashi observes neutrally; Iruka’s head snaps up, blinking at him in confusion. “How you continue to teach,” Kakashi elaborates before he takes another sip of tea.

Iruka seems to think over what he’d said in the short intervening silence and says, “Of course I worry about my students when they graduate.” He sighs heavily. “And I know what their chance of survival are like. And what they’ll do and likely go through in their years after me. But all I can do is have faith in them to live to the best of their potential and burn with the Will of Fire while they’re still here.”

Kakashi’s eye half-lids and his hidden mouth quirks sadly. “Like I said. No idea how.” The idea of what Naruto could be going through…. what Sasuke is likely going through and what he’s given up… Kakashi smothers the unhappiness that rises up in him at the thoughts. “But I suppose I’ve never been a very devout person,” he finishes lightly, exposed eye curving up.

Iruka considers him soberly, then says, “That just makes what you’ve done for Team Seven even more profound.”

He averts his eyes in time for him to miss the spasm of emotion that passes across Kakashi’s face at those surprising words, the jonin gaping rather unflatteringly under his bandanna. Of all the things Iruka-sensei could have said, had the right to say in light of all the places Kakashi had failed with Naruto, the Academy teacher’s precious person, these words weren’t what Kakashi had been expecting.

Iruka continues, oblivious to Kakashi’s emotional turmoil, and says, “Naruto told me a lot about you, you know. One time--,” and launches into a story that Kakashi realizes belatedly is a Naruto-embellished retelling of one of Team Seven’s D-rank missions that’s just as hilariously inaccurate as one would expect from the blond boy. It gives Kakashi time to recompose himself and file away Iruka’s words and the emotions they’d caused in him to be analyzed later.

“Well, I’m fairly sure I wasn’t _so_ unobservant and that Sakura wasn’t nearly that impressed with Naruto,” Kakashi replies dryly when Iruka finishes recounting the story. “What actually happened was--” starting at the beginning to explain the entire thing from a (slightly) more reasonable and certainly less biased viewpoint in such a blunt manner that it has Iruka in stitches by the end of his recounting somehow.

“I would have paid a _lot_ of money to see Sasuke’s face right then,” Iruka gasps out, wiping at his streaming eyes with the back of his hand. “The Last Uchiha and the Great Wall of Pre-Pubescent Angst shattering his ice shell because Naruto managed to trick him…” He chuckles one last time, then exhales lightly, mouth still pulled into a smile. “That reminds me of this one prank Naruto pulled--” he begins, before getting into another anecdote of Naruto’s past.

Kakashi listens, enjoying the animated way Iruka’s face changes as he talks, how he shifts voices for each player in the tale, and the way he uses his hands to tell the story, brown eyes shining brightly in enthusiasm and mirth. Kakashi finds himself laughing at a particularly convenient twist of fate and its fallout in Iruka’s narrative, and the teacher wraps up with palpable triumph, grinning broadly at Kakashi’s reaction.

“My, my: I wish Naruto had showed half as much creativity in his battle strategies when we were training,” Kakashi says (and for once, the thought doesn’t hurt quite as much), then continues, a smile pulling at his mouth and his eye curving slightly. “Though I remember one time, he and Sasuke--”

And so on, back and forth, filling Kakashi’s empty apartment with chatter and the occasional laugh--until they discover the pot of tea is empty when Iruka moves to automatically refill Kakashi’s cup like he’d been doing to no change in the level of liquid. The jonin glances up at the clock at that, confirming his internally-calculated time.

“My, my, sensei; we’ve managed to while away almost two hours.”

Iruka starts and looks at the clock himself before glancing out the window at the pitch blackness outside.

“Ack--how in the world--!” He shoots Kakashi an apologetic look as he sets down his teacup and picks up his bag, starting to pack up Naruto’s notes and souvenirs. “I’m so sorry, Kakashi, sir; I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time--”

“Don’t be sorry,” Kakashi says, smothering his childish disappointment at the other’s imminent departure. “I really enjoyed it. And we’re not in the Mission Room or even in public right now, Iruka-sensei; you can just call me Kakashi.”

Iruka’s hands falter at that, and he looks up into Kakashi’s face as if to confirm his sincerity, scrutinizing it silently for a long heartbeat before looking back down, a smile and blush coming to his face at whatever he’d found there.

“Kakashi, then. I’m sorry for running out on you, but I have dinner to eat and a few stacks of homework I need to grade before I can sleep tonight--and I’m going to need all the strength I can muster against the ravening hordes tomorrow. We’re practicing throwing shuriken, and I need to start the more advanced kids on throwing multiples.” He grimaces in an exaggerated fashion at Kakashi, making him laugh.

“I wish you the best of luck then; that endeavor sounds worth of a C or B-rank mission. Better you than me,” Kakashi concludes cheerfully, beaming as innocently as he can in the face of Iruka’s half-serious glower.

“Well, I’ll live,” Iruka replies philosophically as he stands, Kakashi rising as well to escort him to the door. “If I can survive the generation that produced the Rookie Nine, I should be okay.”

“Hopefully~” Kakashi pauses in the entryway, watching Iruka’s feet as they’re fit back into his sandals. “Ah but, thank you, Iruka-sensei. Allowing me to see the things from Naruto… that was very kind of you, and I truly appreciate it.”

Iruka flushes dark red at that, staying bent over a second longer than necessary after he’s put his shoes on--then straightens with a huff, tugging at the bottom of his vest to rearrange it. “It was my pleasure, Kakashi, si--Kakashi. And I really enjoyed tonight as well… ah.” He rubs self-consciously at the scar across his nose. “So thank _you_ for that.” He seems to flounder for a second, as though waging an internal battle, before turning to pull open the door and step outside.

He looks back over his shoulder at Kakashi before he goes though, dark brown eyes finding his; he smiles at him and Kakashi can feel his heart melting in an especially embarrassing way at the sweet, soft, _happy_ curve of Iruka’s lips given to him.

“See you around?” Iruka says, his face open and… hopeful?

Kakashi’s almost positive he’s misreading the teacher, but responds sincerely anyway: “Of course. Until later, Iruka-sensei.”

Iruka’s smile just widens into a full-blown grin in response, the lack of inhibition in the expression making it look so much like one of Naruto’s smiles that it makes Kakashi ache a little, before leaping off into the night, letting the door swing closed in front of Kakashi.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year, everyone! Here's an update to kick things off real nice~

His apartment suddenly feels far too cold and quiet and empty, old ghosts and regrets sinking firmly into his bones at the cessation of Iruka’s presence. Kakashi distracts himself for a few seconds with tracking the teacher’s progress across the roofs before sighing, telling himself he’s delaying the inevitable, and tearing his attention away from the other man. He goes to raid the fridge instead to see what he can scrounge up for dinner.

Forty minutes later has him working on his mission report while he eats a pseudo-casserole concoction that resembles macaroni and cheese by dint of having macaroni, alfredo sauce, mixed vegetables, and a little seared chicken in it. It doesn’t taste as horrifying as the list of ingredients suggests, at least; given Kakashi’s excellent sense of smell, his sense of taste is almost as good (which contributes to his dislike of sweets, whose sugar is overwhelming and tends to make his teeth ache, and fried things, which smell-taste of pooling oil). Years of living on field rations supplemented with whatever could be caught in the wilderness have given him the ability to cobble together something palatable from almost nothing--as well as the ability to grit his teeth and bear terrible food, not to mention the control he’s gained over his gag reflex. He truly appreciated the chance he had while inside the village to cook, but usually… he just got caught up in things, alright? Visiting the Monument wasn’t the only place he lost time; he couldn’t count the number of times he’d settled down with a book only to realize after closing the thing that the sun had set and that he’d missed at least one meal.

 _The Hatake diet,_ he thinks wryly to himself. _Get so focused on something that you forget to eat, sleep, and don’t realize what time it is until you’re irreparably late. Keeps you slim like a charm!_

He finishes dinner and washes the bowl, pot, and the teacup Iruka had used before he goes to put on his uniform and exits his apartment via the window, stepping easily around Mister Ukki’s permanent guarding position on the the sill. He closes the pane after him, feeling his traps click into activation when he does, and smiles to himself as he starts off across the roofs.

Tenzo’s apartment is in one of the oldest buildings in Konoha--long and squat, the place is practically overrun by vines climbing on the wooden walls and is way too close to the founding clan quarter of old Konoha for most people’s comfort ( _being too close to the Hyuuga does that to many_ , Kakashi thinks cheerfully to himself, completely and deliberately avoiding any thoughts about the Uchihas’ abandoned, empty family compound housed there as well.)

Tenzo likes the place though, and as he mainly shares the building with elderly civilians, is mostly undisturbed by the typical ebb and flow of shinobi life. He also gets a discount on his rent due to him being able to fix most anything around the building and from the civilians’ sense of added security in having a high-ranked shinobi nearby in case anything happens.

(“Besides,” Tenzo had confessed to him once. “It’s nice being able to come back to a place where I’m just Shinobi-sama and not one in sixty with a bloodline ability that hasn’t been seen since the Senju.” He’d smiled sheepishly and added, “Plus, my landlady bakes fresh bread every Sunday and gives me a loaf. Fixing the occasional warped floorboard or scaring off a petty thief is worth it just for Missus Akira’s baking.”

And Kakashi had just kindly accepted his former subordinate’s words at face value, realizing it wasn’t his place to pry, and changed the subject to spare them both.)

Kakashi lands on a branch of a tree close to Tenzo’s living room window and flares his chakra--one; one; two; three; five--before settling back against the trunk of the tree to wait.

He has about a half-second’s warning in the form of a low, feline rumble and a soft thump of padded paws landing on a branch above him and leaping off again before an absolutely massive, battlescarred, grey tom lands next to him; Kakashi looks down into the imperious yellow stare of the pseudostray that haunts Tenzo’s apartment complex before bending over to scratch the cat behind its ears.

“Hello Onii-san,” Kakashi says. “Scared off any Inuzuka this month?” The cat just leans against his shins, and only a quick application of chakra to the soles of Kakashi’s feet keeps him from being knocked off the branch by thirty solid pounds of feline muscle.

The deliberate click of Tenzo’s window opening gets both their attention; Kakashi glances up, looks back down to give the cat one last rub, and hops over to the building, slipping inside. Perched on the windowsill, he gives Tenzo a sunny smile through his mask that makes the younger man roll his eyes; Tenzo’s dressed at least, but sans his usual headgear, the brown spikes of his hair (still a little damp from his shower; not up long, then) sticking up a bit haphazardly as a result.

“Kakashi. Come in; you’re giving the bugs the perfect opportunity to enter.” Tenzo flops into an armchair and motions at the other one, and Kakashi closes the window after him to sit in the squashy item of furniture.

“So you didn’t tell the Hokage about me already being Owl’s touchstone,” Kakashi says without preamble. “That’s a bit devious of you, kohai.”

Tenzo looks a bit caught between sheepishness and a snigger; he settles for smiling a little at Kakashi and saying neutrally, “Is it?”

“You know Tsunade would throw a fit if she knew,” Kakashi says, laying a gimlet stare on Tenzo. “Two active shinobi being each others’ touchstones? That’s just asking for trouble. So why did you let Owl do it?”

Tenzo is silent for a long moment; he sits with his arms crossed over his chest and looks at the ceiling for the entirety of said moment, evidently pondering his words, before he turns his eyes and attention back to Kakashi. “Owl made some… very interesting points. And also said that he’d be one of the few people capable of bringing you down. He told us what he’d seen and guessed about you based on what he already knew, and made a stab at explaining his reasons for wanting the action, and Horse and I thought that we could give it a try. Owl is certainly very… different from your usual touchstones--in that he’s much more aware of the sorts of missions and what they entail that you’ll be coming back from. Also, he volunteered. And was pretty vehement about it.” Tenzo uncrosses his arms and folds his hands in his lap as he leans forward to stare seriously into Kakashi’s visible eye. “So give him a chance and see what happens before you sabotage your own touchstone relationship again.”

Kakashi opens his mouth, and Tenzo shoots him a particularly heavy look, one with a very-strongly implied, ‘I am an ANBU Commander and so help me if you so much as sulk, I will give you a piece of my mind and a kunai up your ass’ in it. Kakashi sulks anyway, not scared enough by Tenzo’s stony countenance and all his implied threats to not.

“No wonder Tsunade calls you a brat,” Tenzo says lightly, a little resigned, and Kakashi’s eyebrow rises at him.

“She’s also over twice our age; she has the grandmother rights,” Kakashi counters, and Tenzo chuckles a little.

They sit in silence for a few long moments, listening to the buzz of insects outside and the distant bustling of the still-active center of Konoha before Kakashi breaks the quiet.

“So you’re seriously committed to this. Not just as a friend, but as my technical superior.”

Tenzo just nods once, and Kakashi sighs as though extremely put-upon.

“Fine. Same rules as before. No telling Tsunade everything unless something happens; keep this between the three of you.” Tenzo nods again, looking serious, and Kakashi stands, moving back to the window.

“Kakashi,” Tenzo says before he reaches the exit; the jonin pauses in his movement and looks over his shoulder at his kohai. “... Owl likes ramen.”

Kakashi furrows his brow and narrows his eye at Tenzo; the other seems torn between shifting uncomfortably at the pointed look of semi-disapproval from his sempai (old habits die hard) and amusement at Kakashi’s sake.

“In case you get the opportunity to cook for him,” Tenzo offers instead, his apparent seriousness belied by the sparkle of amusement in his almond-shaped eyes.

Kakashi resists the urge to roll his in response and grumbles, “Conniving looks _really_ weird on you, kohai.” before leaving via the window.

(He still makes a mental note about the food. Just in case.)

* * *

Gai’s washing dishes when Kakashi arrives at his kitchen window.

The taijutsu master moves to unlatch the pane with a soapy hand when Kakashi appears in the glass and steps away from the sink so Kakashi can vault over the running water and the mixed plates and pans in it to land in the kitchen; Gai calmly closes the window as Kakashi calculates the dishes to pan ratio he’d glimpsed and comes to his conclusion.

“Had a guest over?” he asks Gai, and gets a pleased smile as a response.

“Observant as ever, my genius Rival. Yes, I had Lee over--my darling student’s and my training went later than both of us anticipated, and I invited him back for dinner as an apology.”

“Ahh, I see.” Kakashi flops bonelessly into a chair at the table wedged into the kitchen and absentmindedly watches with mild interest Gai’s brisk movements as he cleans. Gai is one of the few jonin he knows to have his receiving area be his kitchen--it says something about the apartment’s occupant, which part of their defenses they choose to keep slightly more relaxed to encourage the arrival of guests. Gai’s kitchen--sunny, warm, and replete with the scent of the man’s cooking--is as welcoming as his flamboyant public attitude is deceiving. (The enthusiasm in his public persona, private life, and ANBU life is genuine, though--it’s what earned him the Horse title, unflaggingly determined but not aggressive enough for Ox. Gai’s no hunter, and both of them are more-than all right with that.)

(The man’s even a vegetarian when possible, for heaven’s sake. Who _does_ that?)

“So you told Owl my favorite foods,” Kakashi says, eye now fixed between Gai’s shoulderblades. “While your approval of the relationship is nice, I _would_ have appreciated informing me of the decision beforehand… So why the sudden change of heart?” _First you’re telling me to not get too trusting in Owl, and now you’re handing him small secrets of mine,_ Kakashi thinks to himself, chin propped up on his hand. _So what is it about Owl that makes you and Tenzo trust him?_

_... Yes, I’m snooping a little. I’m curious, alright?_

Gai sets aside the last plate in the drying rack and turns, leaning on the counter as he wipes his hands on a dishtowel, and meets Kakashi’s gaze fearlessly, amusement making the corner of his mouth twitch.

Kakashi glowers at him. “You and Tenzo both. I don’t see what’s so funny,” he whines. Gai laughs at him, the jerk.

“It’s merely that we, for a lack of a better way to phrase it, know something that you don’t know.”

Kakashi pouts, and Gai snickers at his antics. “No, my eternal Rival, I cannot tell you, no matter how hard you sulk at me. It is not my secret to give.”

Kakashi drops the pout and pleading look and goes straight into contemplative at that, connecting the dots--Tenzo’s willingness to allow this entire thing, the sudden way Gai had changed his mind, how neither of them had been suspicious of Owl’s intuition or his (evidently accurate) observations, and how they’d been willing to go along with the hunter’s plans--suggestions, whatever--and feels his mouth twist as his brain reaches the most-logical conclusion: “You know who Owl is in his other life, don’t you? He deliberately told you enough to figure out who he was or Tenzo told you, because Owl needed your approval to go along with this scheme and whoever he is on the other side of the coin made you trust him enough for this.” _Someone visible, then? Someone Gai would have immediately recognized and trusted due to their reputation. Who in the village, though…?_ Gai’s nod only confirms his theory, and Kakashi sits back in the chair, a little impressed and _very_ curious now. “Tenzo gave me his favorite food,” Kakashi says to Gai, then shrugs a shoulder. “Either he thought it was fair play or trusted me enough to have it for the future. I’m not sure his faith in this dual relationship is well-placed.”

Gai’s eyes spark, and he grins as he tosses the dish towel onto its hanger. “ _I_ think it’s a good investment on both your parts.”

Kakashi eyeballs him and says with a hint of exasperation, “This is going to be like the thing with the spandex again, isn’t it? Really dumb to everyone who’s out of the loop or who can’t see underneath the underneath to the actual reasoning--but is _actually_ brilliant, huh?”

Gai’s beaming grin audibly sparkles, his teasing obvious. “Now, now, my genius Rival, it’s hardly anyone’s fault that most cannot see the effect of removing potentially hampering cloth from the path of my taijutsu and the ease with which spandex can be fireproofed against the heat of my more Passionate attacks.” Kakashi snorts to himself; he’d been a teenager when he’d figured it out and had promptly been torn about whether or not Gai had done it deliberately--and when he’d accused the taijutsu freak of hiding greater intelligence, Gai had just beamed at him and said that he _was_ still a shinobi, after all. Their friendship had truly started to solidify after that, when Kakashi had learned to respect the other man.

(Gai moved through air like water and though it was much thinner than the liquid substance, the hampering effect it had upon his limbs when wearing the standard uniform had cost him precious time that they, growing up in the middle of a war, had realized could mean the difference between life and death. The absurd color only added to the befuddling personality that Gai projected--as the man had once told him, it was easier to defeat an opponent if they believed him a fool and underestimated him.)

“Yeah, I can see how that would be a secret you couldn’t tell,” Kakashi murmurs, then runs a hand through his hair, shrugging at Gai. “Guess I need to keep looking underneath the underneath then, huh?”

Gai laughs brightly. “Indeed my dear Rival--but I have no doubt you’ll persevere in the end!” He clenches his fist, giving him a thumbs up of encouragement, and Kakashi chuckles in response, rising from the chair.

“Thanks, Gai.” Kakashi pauses. “Ah right, also--you know, someone used you as a threat against me today.”

Gai stiffens, straightening imperiously to his full height. “In what way--” he begins, voice ominous, but Kakashi cuts him off with a wave of his hand, instantly realizing his mistake.

“My, my, I apologize; it wasn’t a threat of bodily harm. Umino-sensei was trying to get me somewhere on time and threatened siccing you on me for a challenge.” Kakashi chuckles. “It was perceptive--and rather bluntly honest of him. I thought you’d find it funny.” Gai subsides, frowning just a hair--and then beams, to Kakashi’s confusion.

“Quite perceptive of Iruka-sensei indeed,” Gai says, and Kakashi narrows his eye at the man. Gai looks almost… smug, as though Kakashi’s words had confirmed something for him, and frankly, it makes Kakashi nervous and slightly irritable. Smug and Gai should never go together; they’re like mint toothpaste and orange juice. Or Anko and a sex dungeon. Or Anko and feminine, frilly things. Kakashi suppresses a shudder at the thought.

Gai just makes a valiant attempt at sparkling at him with innocence without changing his self-contented expression, and Kakashi scowls at him from behind his mask, refusing to rise to the bait of asking what the hell has Gai making that face. He’s not going to give the man that satisfaction, though; instead, he flaps a hand imperiously at the other, gesturing for him to move away from the sink and the window over it.

“Okay, okay, you’ve had your fun laughing at Kakashi,” said jonin says. “Now move so I can go home.”

Gai laughs but obliges, shifting aside so Kakashi can hop onto the edge of of the sink; he balances there for a second, hand on the latch, and tilts his head at Gai, who looks back at him curiously.

Then Kakashi scrubs a hand through his hair, sighs, and grumbles, “I can’t believe you know who Owl is already. That is _so_ uncool.” before vaulting out the window, leaving Gai laughing uproariously behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: I always forget to make this note: the signal Kakashi uses to get Tenzo's attention (demonstrated in this chapter and chapter 4) is the Fibonacci Sequence--which is also the pattern of growth many biological organisms show (including branching patterns in trees).
> 
> More info can be found [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number#In_nature)


	14. Chapter 14

Kakashi finishes Tsunade’s mission report that night, then works on the cover report for most of the morning and into the afternoon of the next day, with a brief break for lunch and some Icha Icha.

He gets to the Mission Desk to turn it in just in time for shift change, and Kakashi’s pleased to find himself being served by Iruka. He gives the teacher an eye-smile of greeting around his book (which is actually Icha Icha today) and hands over his cover report--written within passable standards this time due to how much extra care he’d taken to nitpick each draft before he’d done the official one in ink. Even Iruka looks pleasantly surprised at the condition of the thing and stamps it as ‘acceptable’ with a small smile on his face.

“Now, see, that wasn’t so difficult, was it, Kakashi-sensei?” Iruka teases, amusement making his eyes mischievously bright.

Kakashi snorts softly. “I’m not sure the four drafts I wrote before that one would really agree, sensei,” he replies easily, giving Iruka a small eye-smile when the teacher laughs. “Also, I was wondering if there were any short B or C-rank missions available… ?”

Iruka’s amusement slips away in favor of confusion, the teacher staring up at him with a hint of concern in his face; Kakashi just stares at him pleasantly but expectantly, silent, and Iruka flushes after a few seconds, ducking his head and murmuring something inaudible while grabbing at a list of available missions next to his elbow.

“Ah, how short are you thinking, Kakashi, sir?” Iruka asks, eyes skimming over the listings.

“One or two or even three days, sensei, would be nice,” Kakashi replies easily and waits, reading his book, as Iruka goes through the information.

“Ah, you’re in luck, Kakashi, sir: there’s a B-rank escort mission with two chunin just needing a jonin commander. If you’re willing to take that one, it will be your responsibility to brief and gather the other two nin. The three of you will depart at your discretion--though I believe the client requested urgency. Is this mission acceptable?”

“Sounds good,” Kakashi drawls, then closes his book with an audible snap, tucking it into a pocket even as he holds out his other hand for the mission scroll; Iruka signs everything out and then places it in his palm.

“Good luck on your mission,” Iruka says, looking up into his single visible eye, and Kakashi knows the words are rote, said to every shinobi, but feels warmed by them anyway.

“Hmm, I’ll try my best,” Kakashi replies, and he tries for flippant and unconcerned only to end up a little more honest and serious than he’d usually be.

Iruka’s eyes soften as though he’d realized the difference and recognized what it meant ( _which he doesn’t!_ Kakashi internally reminds himself, quashing the instinctive initial panic of having unintentionally revealed more than he’d intended to) but thankfully doesn’t say anything else, just calling out, “Next!”

Kakashi escapes while he still can and hides out in his apartment for a little while as he reads the details of his mission. It seems straightforward enough, if cutting through an area that had been reported as having a high amount of bandit activity lately, but that was why it was a B-rank and not the C-rank it would have been otherwise.

Kakashi takes a detour on his venture back outside, turning in his mission report to Tsunade before going on to round up his other two teammates and telling them that he was their commander and when they were going to leave (which was going to be tomorrow. He’s not under any sort of illusion that his life habits, gained from his existence constantly being on a mission or on standby for a mission, were the norm for the rest of the village. Most people needed at least half a day in advance to get their affairs in order, to pack, and to mentally prepare themselves for what was to come--not five minutes so they could change and grab their pre-packed supplies.)

(They _are_ leaving at dawn though; there’s a difference between being considerate and totally ignoring the ‘be as quick as you can’ stipulation.)

He spends the rest of the day thinking about the note Owl will help him deliver. With the way the hunter traveled, while accounting for the possibility of not getting leave, Kakashi had asked him to come back Friday evening, implying that he use the weekend for this task… well, favor, really.

Kakashi stares down at the page he’s turned to in his notepad, the inked features of the man whose family Owl would deliver the news to staring back at him.

Carefully, Kakashi tears out the picture, separating it from the rest in the notepad, and takes another sheet of paper, beginning to transcribe the man’s message, Kakashi’s record of the situation, and begin the short letter--the note, really--that explained the circumstances.

He flounders when he tries to think about how he should end the missive. Should he be honest? What could he say to the wife of the man he’d killed that would even approach easing her grief? Anything he could write would be empty words, useless platitudes, an echo of hated phrases he’d heard over and over through his life: ‘He’d lived well;’ ‘I’m sorry;’ ‘It will be fine;’ ‘You’ll feel better in time.’

He goes to bed instead, packs everything for the mission up before he does, and leaves his refilled pen and the notepad out on the table. He doubts he’ll need it--it’s only a B-rank after all--but… just in case.

He leaves Konoha at dawn and comes back Friday morning with everyone in his team safe, mostly in one piece, and the mission compete. He (looms over) (shooes) assists the two other chunin to the hospital to get their minor wounds patched, glad to see all of them back home (they’d run into two separate bandit crews, but neither of them had been much challenge.)

Now just to go back to the apartment, finish up his note, write his instructions, and wait for Owl…

“Oh! Welcome back, Kakashi-sensei. Something on your mind?”

Kakashi blinks, interrupted from his preoccupying thoughts, and blinks, glancing down into Iruka’s face. The chunin smiles at him, eyes curving up merrily. He has a pile of scrolls and other sorts of paperwork in his arms.

Kakashi blinks again at him in confusion, shaking his head. “Nothing important.” Then looks around at their surroundings just to confirm that they’re in the middle of a hospital hallway and this it is indeed close to noon at this point. Twelve PM on a _Friday_.

“Ah… though thank you, Iruka-sensei, for welcoming me back.” Kakashi pauses, wondering if there’s any way he can phrase this delicately, then decides no, not really, and goes with being blunt. “Shouldn’t you be at the Academy?”

“Yes,” Iruka says just as bluntly back, then laughs. “I’m missing part of my lunch break, but it couldn’t really be helped. They needed me to find where some files had gone, and since I was the last registered name to have handled them…” He shifts the pile in his arms a little ruefully. “They’re relatively important, so I had to track them down. Tsunade wanted to see them.”

“Oh.” Kakashi eyeballs the stack. “Should I help…?”

A flicker of emotion crosses Iruka’s face--Kakashi catches surprise and nervousness and… satisfaction? before the teacher shakes his head.

“No, I’ve got it. Thank you, though.” Iruka pauses, then tilts his head and smiles as he considers the way Kakashi’s just awkwardly lingering before him. “But you can accompany me back to her office if you’d like.”

Kakashi tries to not perk very visibly, and restrains himself to a nod before they start off down the hall, chatting comfortably about this and that as they go outside and climb stairs and Kakashi holds doors open for Iruka. ( _Well, one polite turn deserves another, right? And Iruka really was too polite in ignoring all my social ineptness when he came to visit,_ Kakashi thinks to himself, then feels a little ashamed when Iruka says hello to a civilian mother of one of his students on the way to Hokage Tower. They chat and she asks after Iruka’s health and the kids and his general state of mind while Kakashi lingers awkwardly a few yards away down the street, nose buried in Icha Icha and simultaneously trying to look like he’s walking with Iruka and that he’s not while he waits. He’s pretty sure the mother glances at him out of the corner of her eye at one point and deliberately tries to sidetrack Iruka into an impromptu parent-teacher conference when she realizes what Kakashi’s reading.

Iruka even apologizes for the delay when he finally disentangles himself from her conversational clutches, and Kakashi responds with a noncommittal ‘mm’ and by feeling a little worse.)

(He thus totally misses the concerned sidelong glance that Iruka gives him because of it.)

“Well, here’s my stop,” Iruka says cheerfully once they’re outside Tsunade’s office. The teacher shifts the papers in his arm, and a white-edged scroll catches a stray sunbeam and Kakashi’s momentary attention. It looks familiar, but Kakashi temporarily puts it out of his mind in favor of eye-smiling at Iruka.

“And look, you arrived safely. No doubt because of my presence,” Kakashi replies lightly, thrilling at Iruka’s laugh.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better guard. Even if you did let me fall prey to Missus Ahiri,” Iruka teases back. The teacher smiles up at him, and Kakashi can’t help but eye-smile back (despite the bit of guilt he’s feeling over the whole incident earlier).

“We’ll meet again later?” Iruka asks, and Kakashi nods. “Good. See you, Kakashi-sensei.”

Kakashi makes sure Iruka gets into Tsunade’s office safely before leaving. Just in case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's not a date, kakashi protests; i was just helping!
> 
> mhm. yes, alright. if you say so. :|;;


	15. Chapter 15

Kakashi picks up paperwork for the B-rank mission and takes it home to fill out. Since it’s only been two days, all his food is still good; he puts the rice cooker on and starts filling out the forms he just got, putting the kettle on to boil as well.

Plain green tea (he lets the water sit long enough to not scorch the delicate leaves) in celebration of a mission that went off without a hitch, and Kakashi’s almost done with a fourth of the report by the time the rice is done cooking. He amuses himself with making onigiri out of whatever odds and ends he has lying around in his fridge (umeboshi is ordinary enough, but he decides to be whimsical and and fills one with the little bit of teriyaki takeout he has left and another with pickled ginger and sweet and sour radish); he eats two standing at the counter for lunch before he brings two back to the table and goes to clean up the kitchen.

Somehow one thing leads to another, and Kakashi finds himself four hours later with a clean bathroom, freshly changed sheets, mopped floorboards, everything dusted, several loads of laundry, and Owl sitting on his couch, casually drinking from his teacup and eating his onigiri.

“Pleck,” the hunter comments. “God, what was _in_ that one? Ginger and--” His jaw moves as he digs something out of his teeth with his tongue. “--radish? Please tell me that was a culinary experiment and not something you usually eat.” He downs more tea and gives Kakashi the impression of wounded unhappiness from being betrayed by his food.

Kakashi looks out the window to find the sun setting and comments casually, “A bit early, aren’t we?” before going to throw the first load of laundry into the machine.

“A little bird told me you were having some trouble with something,” Owl calls after him, and Kakashi snorts as he measures detergent out and pours it in as well.

“Clever birdy,” he replies and gets the impression that Owl is grinning at him when he comes back into the living room. He plops down on the couch next to the hunter and leans over to pull out the notepad and the note, setting both on the table.

Owl’s shoulder brushes his as he leans over them, glancing at their contents. Kakashi wants to pull him back from the notepad (he’s accepted Owl, is really _quite_ fond of him, but some private things are _private_ ) but resists (he’s trying to get better.) Owl just seems to skim the contents of both anyway, identifying the problem immediately, and leans his elbows on his knees to look back over his shoulder at Kakashi.

“It doesn’t have an end,” Owl says, and Kakashi nods, shifting slightly where he sits.

“I couldn’t…” he starts, before spreading his hands helplessly. “What could I even say? There’s nothing that I could write or do that would help. I’m a stranger, and all strangers can do is offer platitudes and unwelcome perspectives.”

“Ah.” Owl looks back at the note but leans over, just a little, until his shoulder barely brushes Kakashi’s again. It’s not a heavy contact--but it’s constant and that’s what matters. It grounds him, conducts him (lightning through water to earth), and Kakashi exhales, feeling the uneasy, minute flickers of his chakra ease into plush smoothness at the press of Owl’s.

“So don’t end it,” the hunter suddenly says, and Kakashi opens his eyes (when had he closed them?) to look at the man in confusion. Owl smiles at him through the press of their chakra. “So don’t end it,” he repeats, ”Just leave it as it is--and if they want to know more, if they want to talk, I’ll be there. If you can trust me with that…” He tilts his head to one side, birdlike, and Kakashi laughs roughly even as he feels the weight of needing to make the decision lift off of his chest.

“Do I trust you… yes. Yes. Do you need the memory?” Kakashi asks, and Owl is still for a long moment, an unknown emotion filtering into his chakra. Kakashi prods at it experimentally, questioningly, and it flares in response even as Owl jumps, startled.

“Ow, hey--stop it; I’m fine.” He ‘bats’ Kakashi away, and the other grins cheekily in response.

“Well, you weren’t reacting, so I thought I’d check to see if you were alive,” Kakashi says, and then mock-flinches at the jab Owl makes to his side. “Ah, foul play!” Owl prods him again, fingertips twitching as though to tickle him, and Kakashi squirms away from them to safety, yelping, “No, no, it really is foul play now--tickling isn’t allowed!” as he does.

Owl makes a threatening motion in his direction, and Kakashi catches his fingers in one of his hands as though to restrain him and squeezes them gently instead. Both still and stare at each other for a moment, a heartbeat stretching long between them, before Kakashi untangles his fingers and leans closer in order to press them shoulder-to-shoulder once again.

He feels Owl exhale silently beside him, as though letting go of the tension from the moment, and then he says, “If you would be willing to share the moment, I would take it.”

“It won’t be pleasant,” Kakashi says automatically, because it won't be; it’ll be the burden of himself and he feels the need to warn Owl, to give him one more chance to back out.

Owl’s shoulders shake when he laughs, soft and mirthless. “They rarely are,” he says back, and Kakashi can see the dark shadows of the past move underneath the too-still surface of the drowning pool inside the man as he speaks.

Kakashi shifts instead of answering, turns on the couch to sit angled into Owl, and gently takes the man’s face in his hands, finding the dark gleam of shadowed eyes behind the slits of his mask. One last chance to back out--and Owl’s eyes just crinkle at him in a smile, and the hunter says, “Thrice and it will be done.” before adding more gently, “Yes. I’m sure.” to him.

Kakashi thinks, _You’ll do so much in the line of duty_ as he opens Obito’s eye and doesn’t even realize the irony in the statement as his pupil swirls.

He locks eyes with Owl and they both fall into the memory headfirst.

Every emotion, every breath, every word, every flare of chakra within himself, and every _sensation_ as he tears through the remains of men and women is replayed through him for Owl, emblazoned as a memory for the other man (Kakashi feels a brief moment of jealousy--the passage of time would ease the edges off Owl’s impression of his pain, turn it soft and smoothed like beach glass, while he’ll suffer with it in all its crimson clarity until the end of his life due to the Sharingan. ~~[But it’s apt punishment for the man who has let so many die.]~~ ) and when they surface from the past, breaking through to the present with dual gasps of air, they tread water together as Owl’s arms come up so he can cradle Kakashi’s face in his hands in the same way he is his.

“What a blessing and a curse,” Owl murmurs, and his voice is raw, shaken and flavored Mist again; Kakashi can taste the tears in the words. “I never knew…”

“Most don’t,” Kakashi replies, brusque, and tries to pull away; Owl’s hands just tighten even as they shake finely.

“Shh, come here… I’m alright,” Owl murmurs to him, and the man rubs the sides of his thumbs against Kakashi’s cheekbones. “I never knew, but now I do. Thank you for that, and I…” He trails off, and Kakashi’s heart constricts in his chest as he waits for the blow--”I’m sorry, I can’t do this;” “I didn’t know what I was getting into;” “I’m sorry; I can’t be your support now that I know, Hatake, sir.”

 

He closes his eyes because he’s a coward in this and doesn’t want to remember or see the hit coming, because he knows he can’t dodge.

Instead, Owl’s fingers clutch tighter at his skull, and the hunter nearly snarls at him, “Dammit, Kakashi, don’t _do_ that! You think I’m such a shitty sensor that I can’t tell when you steel yourself like that when we’re sitting _this_ damn close?” Kakashi’s eyes snap open in surprise, and the Sharingan spins sluggishly into life in time to catch the fierce blaze of Owl’s eyes at him. He thinks the hunter is _actually_ snarling at him, on second thought, the upcurl of his lip hidden behind his mask but sharp in his voice.

“You idiot,” Owl whispers now, the fierce initial blaze settling down into a simmer as his fingers loosen. “You idiot,” he repeats, and leans forward to wrap arms around Kakashi’s shoulders. “You massive, massive, egotistical idiot,” he mumbles against his neck; the edge of his mask digs uncomfortably into the soft flesh underneath Kakashi’s jaw, but all the jonin can do is hestitate, unsure, before echoing the gesture and draping his arms around Owl, confused.

The hunter sighs against him and shifts a little, speaking without pulling his face away, “I was sincere in the thanks, all right? I wasn’t kidding; I really didn’t know. There’s only so much records can tell you. And I was just going to say that I wasn’t going to forget what you did, the gift you just gave me by willingly sharing.” Kakashi starts to protest, and Owl’s voice turns wry. “And don’t tell me to forget it or demur. It was a gift. Don’t be rude and diminish its worth by trying to back out of it.”

Kakashi stills in his arms and falls silent. Owl sighs, more a sound that rushes like the sea than a sensation due to his mask, and eventually pulls away; he tilts his head at Kakashi and the smile in his chakra is watery sunshine, soft and blunted by sadness (though at what, Kakashi doesn’t know and can’t tell). The sun’s set outside, and the dark grows; the only light between them is what’s reflected in from the waking city’s nightlife. In the apartment, it’s quiet and still between them as of yet, and Kakashi knows it can’t last--savors and fears the moment in equal measures.

“Botan Yue,” Owl says and his voice is melodic and Kakashi can feel him growing more distant as he shifts to the way he behaves and senses when on a mission. He’s drowning, sinking into the pool, and Kakashi wants to jump in after him--but refrains. He’s already shown Owl that he can be the hunter’s lifeline. He can only hope he remembers in the aftermath.

Owl rises in a fluid, languid motion, his hands drifting for a second before he takes the note from the table, folding and tucking the packet of papers away in his kimono, under his vest, close to his heart; he turns his head and ghosts to the window, opening it as the moon rises above Konoha, shining low and orange and malevolent with atmospheric distortion.

“Two days,” Owl murmurs, and his voice is soft and gently accented again, pressed smooth with the weight of his burgeoning, accepted grief.

“May your feet fall fast upon the path,” Kakashi replies. “Good hunting.”

Owl darts off into the settling night like a droplet of water falling from the leaf: pulled by gravity and the tug of the moon and the inevitable force of the sea.


	16. Chapter 16

Owl comes back on the evening of the second day when the moon has cleared the horizon and lies silver and heavy in the sky. The celestial body is waning now, but the quiet pulse of Owl’s chakra at Kakashi’s window is still strong. Kakashi looks up from the next note he’s transcribing and bolts to the pane, unlocking and swinging it open with admirable speed.

“Owl,” he says, and his eye scans the other for injury or harm; he backs away a little from the window as the hunter swings himself in and shuts the pane behind him to sit silently on the sill next to Mister Ukki.

He doesn’t venture any further inside, and that makes Kakashi pause, staying where he is, close enough to touch.

Owl lets his head fall back and sighs, but the chakra that eddies around Kakashi has a sliver of silver, moonlit warmth in it.

“I’m _tired_ ,” Owl complains, and Kakashi snorts. The feeling of warmth increases, tints itself golden. “I know what you did, by the way--making it so I’d have enough time to go and come back but not be dead on my feet when I headed off to work on Monday… excellently executed, taichou,” he teases.

Then he sighs again, and Kakashi asks into the silence, “Would you like some tea?”

“If you bring me your cup,” Owl replies easily. “And as long as it won’t keep me up for hours. I just want something to wet my mouth and then I’ll head home for a long soak and some sleep.” Kakashi moves away to pick up his teacup from where it had been sitting next to the incomplete note, tops it off from the pot, and brings it back to Owl. The hunter tips his mask away from his chin with two fingers of the hand holding the cup and brings the liquid to his revealed lips, drinking deep.

He glances down at the cup in surprise when it’s empty. “Rose tea? Not what I would have expected.” He hands the cup back to Kakashi, who shrugs as he accepts it.

“Tsutsuji Toge*,” he answers.

Owl makes an “ahh” noise and looks again at the table and the opened notepad on top of it. “So soon?”

“I’m going this time. Solo A-rank mission that passes by the town her family’s in.” He shifts uncomfortably underneath Owl’s suddenly sharp gaze. “I’ll be careful.”

“You’re never careful enough,” Owl retorts, and it’s such an unexpected echo of Tenzo that Kakashi barks out a short laugh before he can help himself.

(Then again, Tenzo had been right; Kakashi hadn’t been careful enough with Owl--had, in fact, gone and fallen in love with the man.)

Owl just sighs, exasperated, then says, changing the subject, “They took it fairly well.” He leans forward, just a little, and adds, “Give me a hug,” staying quiet as Kakashi’s arms willingly wrap around the hunter; Owl doesn’t move his own arms, lets them be pinned, and simply lays his head in the cradle of Kakashi’s neck and shoulder.

(His hair slips against Kakashi’s bared forearm; the strands are silky soft and cold from the night.)

(He smells like ashes and salt water and green things and very faintly of tea tree and heavily of the dark; Kakashi categorizes it all, even as Owl continues.)

“His family, that is. Botan’s. He’d been gone for half a year, and he’d been a faithful, steadfast man--they’d suspected foul play and that the authorities had never been able to collect his body. They’d been waiting until the end of the year to have his funeral.” He nuzzles closer, whispers the words directly into Kakashi’s ear. “His wife wept tears of grief, and joy, and relief, and guilt. She asked how he died, and I told her the truth: that he’d been captured by missing nin and been tortured and died saving another.” ( _Shinobi lie._ ) “And that his body had been burnt and that this was what he’d wanted to have said to her and their children, his final wish transcribed in a note from an undertaker.”

Owl laughs, ragged, and tucks his face closer to Kakashi. “We gave her as much as we could--absolution and some sort of resolution. Not knowing… sometimes that’s an even worse torture than the burden of grief itself. Hope is a vicious thing, a blessing and a curse as well.”

Kakashi doesn’t say what he could about the Sharingan, the echo Owl’s words create, and stays silent instead, squeezing him a little tighter.

“I went on a mission as well,” Owl says eventually, and then laughs. “A lot like you’re going to do, too, actually.”

“Oh? Busy,” Kakashi says, and Owl laughs softly again, no joy in the sound--just exhaustion in his voice and the lines of his body.

“Yes. Scavenging a body for Kohona. A shinobi team coming back from a mission got attacked on the way; one of our nin hid the corpse of one of their attackers after the fight. The Hokage needed it to figure out who to retaliate against.” Owl shifts and Kakashi lets him pull away, the hunter sitting back against the glass. “I delivered it already, so I… I think I need to rest.”

“Do you want to stay here? Have something to eat?” Kakashi asks, but Owl shakes his head.

“No, I’m alright now. Just exhausted. But thank you.” He moves his head, turning his face from Kakashi, to the table, back down at Kakashi. “Be more careful than you usually are, then. Think about one mission first, then the other; getting them tangled up in each other will only bring you grief and complicate the issue.”

“Yes, sensei,” Kakashi says dryly, “I _have_ done this before, you know. And I’m _always_ careful.”

“Hardy har har,” Owl replies back just as dryly, twisting where he sits for some reason to pat at his belt pouches. “Wouldn’t know it from how many scars you have. Aha, here it is.” He tugs a scroll from a pouch and hands it to Kakashi.

It tingles against his fingertips, and Kakashi peers at the thin stripe of symbols stitched into the paper along the outermost edge, recognizing something similar to a summoning seal. The thread, he realizes, isn’t black like he’d thought it was, but a very, very dark red. He bends the paper, and the faint, faint scent of old blood wafts up to his nose.

He looks to Owl. “What _is_ this?” he asks--almost demands. It’s _Owl’s_ blood.

“Hunter trade secret,” he shoots back, then concedes as Kakashi’s chakra spikes. “Ah, geeze: calm down, calm down.” He pats at the air with his hands and continues. “I’ll tell you, sorry; it was an automatic response. It’s… well, I call it a Fetching Scroll, but I guess a better term is a Self-Delivering Scroll. Doe and I worked it out--he’s good at seals--it’s activated by ink. When someone writes on it and then signs their name in the delivery square at the end, the jutsu sealed in the paper activates and it reverse-summons the scroll back to the anchor seal’s location. It also can’t have any chakra put into it, so it won’t bring back any traps or exploding tags with it, just ink words.”

Kakashi blinks, interested. “Where is the anchor seal?” he asks; he lifts up his eyepatch to get a better look at the seal and jutsu. The lines of chakra permeating the paper, which would trip a self-destructing symbol if any foreign chakra was loaded on or against them, weave a fine-lined sensory grid across the length of the scroll, the ends tied off neatly by a faintly-glowing (to the Sharingan) seal under where the activating ink would go.

“In T&I,” Owl says and gets a surprised, raised eyebrow from Kakashi for that. He shrugs a little defensively. “T&I can handle anything that could make it past the seal or use the seal to track Konoha. They’re designed to counter enemies.”

Kakashi has to concede that point. “Doe?”

In answer, Owl gestures at his ANBU tattoo and his mask; Kakashi blinks and dredges up ancient memories--the constant, low buzz of a tattoo needle as a slender man with a sword slung across the small of his back repeatedly pricks the skin of Kakashi’s upper arm. The ANBU mask on the man’s face is black lines on white porcelain, painting out the shape of a deer’s face with its eyes closed; his fingers are strong but astonishingly slender, and they look like they’d snap like dry twigs underneath Kakashi’s hands even as they deftly work the ink infused with Kakashi’s blood and chakra back into his own flesh. He remembers the pinch of a seal biting into his system and the flicker of forest green eyes as sharp as leaf blades finding his through the holes of the skull mask that all ANBU trainees wore before they were Named. He remembers the way that the man--Doe--had covered the seal he’d made with the spiral of the tattoo, having just enough left of the ink to dip a finger into it, using it to draw the same spiraling symbol on the waiting, open scroll sitting on the table next to the other tools of his trade.

A contract and contact, that scroll--linked to his chakra system, the scroll would activate and alert the Hokage if the chakra disappeared from Kakashi’s body--if he fell in the field.

“Welcome to ANBU,” Doe had said, and even though the man hadn’t physically been there a month later when the Fourth had finally Named Kakashi, he could see the signature of the ANBU’s workmanship in the lines of the red-on-white Hound mask the Yondaime had given him, as well as in the subtle jutsu in the paint and glaze that made the mask much stronger than the porcelain it was made out of.

“Doe is very good at seals and kenjutsu. Those are his specialties now that--” Owl cuts himself off, then shakes his head at the questioning look Kakashi gives him. “Not my secret to tell,” he explains, and Kakashi lets it go.

They linger in silence a little longer, then Owl breaks it with: “Tell her sister to write if she wants to get in touch with you or me. Someone to talk to who knows what happened.” Owl shrugs at the curious look that Kakashi gives him. “Sometimes they don’t want to talk until later. So I leave them the option, the opening. Regret is almost as bad as hope.”

Kakashi’s still for a long moment, staring down at the scroll sealed and anchored in thread soaked with Owl’s blood, and then nods just once.

“Okay,” Owl says softly. “I’ll watch for your return. Good night, Kakashi.”

“... Good night, Owl.”

The hunter drops back out the window and disappears as gently as he’d come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *) very roughly equivalent to ‘azalea thorn’--which is nothing like a rose, but kakashi logic


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello everyone, i have unfortunate news--my internet modem has gone kaput, so i'm without internet at home until the company can come in and take a look at everything. Unhappy day! Updates will be a little sporadic until things get sorted out, but hopefully I'll have internet by tonight or tomorrow. :C

Kakashi gives in to sentiment and visits Iruka before he leaves on the mission.

He tells himself it’s just polite, that he’s just informing the teacher of changed plans, and tells himself it’s not ‘just in case’ and that it’s not because he doesn’t have a great track record with being careful, and _certainly_ not because the last time he’d been on an A-rank he’d ended up with Owl fetching him back, Death ghosting at his heels.

He tells himself it’s because he doesn’t want nice, sweet, too-kind Iruka-sensei to linger over him in the next few days because he doesn’t know how long he’ll be gone (it’ll depend on how easy it is to spy), and he doesn’t want Iruka to wonder where he is.

He tells himself this, and even mostly believes it as he interrupts Iruka’s class by sticking to the wall just underneath his window and rapping on the glass an instant after he flares his chakra.

There’s a pause in the rhythm of Iruka’s voice and then the sound of steps to the window; Iruka stares at him for a moment, expression rather adorably torn between exasperation and worry, before he opens the window and leans out.

“Hello, Kakashi-sensei. Is… something the matter?” Iruka’s eyes search what little is exposed of Kakashi’s face for an answer to the question of why he’s here, and Kakashi scratches the back of his head sheepishly as he leans away from the window. Suddenly, his reason for coming seems a little silly.

“Ah, Iruka-sensei--I just…” _Come on, Hatake; you can do this._ “I wanted to tell you that I’m heading out on a mission. A-rank. And I don’t know when I’ll be back, but we’ve been running into each other a lot, so I thought I’d tell you not to look for mebecause youwon’tbe ableto'seeme againsoon’justyet.” He finds himself crushing words together in his hurry to get something approximating his intended meaning out of his mouth; Kakashi scratches at his eyebrow and then the back of his head and stares at the bit of wall directly underneath the window Iruka’s leaning out of because it’s so fascinating, really, and totally not because he’s fighting back a blush. His pack suddenly feels really heavy, and he digs irritably at a strap like a dog chasing a flea in order to not look at the way Iruka is probably laughing at him right now. _Some cool and composed nin you are, Hatake_ , he thinks mournfully to himself.

“Kakashi-sensei…” Iruka breathes, and Kakashi snaps his chin and eye up at the sound despite himself, and the _look_ Iruka is giving him makes him immediately duck his head back down again while mentally cursing his fair skin for showing his blush so easily.

Iruka laughs, a nice, warm, too-sweet sound just like the rest of the teacher, and says, very quietly so his class can’t hear, “Thank you, Kakashi-sensei. That was very thoughtful of you.” Then he pauses before adding, “Please be as careful as you can on your mission. Good luck… and come back home soon.”

Kakashi flushes so hard he thinks his ears are turning red even as he treasures the words--when was the last time anyone wished him luck on a mission? When was the last time someone had told him to come _back_?

( _Last night_ , his thoughts whisper at him. _Last night and Owl_ , and there’s something _weird_ about that, but Kakashi puts it aside in favor of controlling his blush enough to look up so he can see where he’s planning to leap to as he vaults off of Iruka’s wall to start towards the village gates.)

 _I’ll be careful_ , he tells himself, because now, he finds, he wants to come home to see Owl and Iruka and to tell them he’s alright.

* * *

Kakashi finishes up the A-rank and drops by Tsutsuji’s sister’s home on the way back, the note packet burning a metaphorical hole in his vest by his heart.

It’s a civilian town, which is unsurprising. It has walls and sleepy guardsmen who are easy to get past and Kakashi finds Tsutuji’s sister’s home without much trouble. She looks a lot like Toge, except maybe prettier, but things like that are always hard to judge.

She comes home and goes to take a shower, stripping out of her hospital scrubs as she walks down the hall that’s easily visible through the window when the viewer is perched in the tree outside her home, and Kakashi slips in while the water is running to leave the note and an origami azalea on the counter in the kitchen where she’d see them when she comes out.

Kakashi lingers in the tree, ankles crossed as his legs swing, and stares alternately at the grass below, the note where it sits in this near-stranger’s kitchen, his hands where they’re folded in his lap, and at the sky, which is starting to change colors with the setting sun.

He hears the water turn off. He hears her walk, loud and carefree, to the fridge, hears her pull out a beer and pop the tab and turn around--

He hears nothing and refuses to look, stares steadily at the sky instead.

There’s the rustle of paper and the scrape of a chair, and Kakashi knows Toge’s sister has sat down to read the note. He can hear the way she treats the paper when she reaches the picture he’d drawn of Toge’s face, the lines rendered scratchy with his haste when he’d made it; she smoothes it, uncreasing the wrinkles, and he can tell how her hands are trembling by the fine rustle of the paper filling the air.

She reads the note and sits still for a long moment. Kakashi’s watching her now, his lips pressed together underneath his mask and his fingers laced tight enough to be bloodless.

She opens the window and glares out at the world, face reddening, and inhales to shout, and Kakashi appears before her, sticking to the outer wall and looming over her before she can scream.

“Hello,” he says quietly, and then lets the punch she throws at him hit him on the chin, snapping his head back.

She gets a handful of his hair and yanks him in through the window, and Kakashi doesn’t fight, just lets her do it; she all but throws him into a chair at the kitchen table and follows close after, doubling both fists in the fabric of his vest’s collar.

The pages of his note lie scattered on the linoleum, one side of all the sheets crinkled from the force of her grip on them, and Kakashi doesn’t take his eye off of her face, contorted as it is with rage.

“I can’t _believe_ you had the fucking _balls_ to hang around out there after you played this sick fucking joke--I don’t know who the _hell_ you are or where you got your information from, but if this was Mato’s great fucking idea, I’m going to tear him a new one right after I get done with you--!”

She cuts herself off as Kakashi raises both hands, palms open and turned to her; he catches her eyes and says, very gently, “I’m telling you the truth, Miss Tsutsuji. Your sister is dead. I’m carrying out her last wish as it was relayed to me.” Her fists clench tighter and he can hear the seams of his vest groan, but he keeps looking at her, projecting as much calm at her as he can pretend to feel; slowly, he watches her anger ebb into disbelief. Her fingers creak as they loosen and as she steps back, putting distance between him and her.

“Y-you--you’re lying. You have to be lying. My little sis isn’t _dead_ , okay; she just… she just ran off for a while. She does that sometimes and she’d just broken up with her jerkass ex-boyfriend Mato, you know, and she’s a grown… a grown woman; she can…”

Kakashi continues to stare at her, gaze straightforward and uncomfortably open, and her eyes flick from him to the sheets of paper on the floor that give her her sister’s final words to her and the picture Kakashi had drawn of her and Toge’s sister’s face crumples, cracks, just a little even as her lips continue to move. “And… I know she’s been gone for… for several months and she hasn’t contacted… me… even though she _always would_ , before...”

She trails off into silence, staring at the floor, hands shaking at her sides, before she drops to her knees with a painful _thud_ and _weeps_.

 

Kakashi makes his movements out of the chair as obvious and as loud as he can, scuffing his sandals against the tile; he drops gracefully into a crouch and suppresses his flinch when she flings her arms around his neck. She cries messily into his shoulder, and Kakashi awkwardly pats her hair and back, at a bit of a loss--he’s not unfamiliar with tears in his profession, but comforting honest grief is something he’s not practiced with (he wishes for a moment that Owl was here, because Owl would know what to do; even Iruka would be a better choice than Kakashi himself, because all _he_ can really do is be there like some sort of existential, useless rock.)

She cries herself out and leaves a damp spot on the shoulder of his vest, then pulls away sniffling, pawing at the scattered papers on the floor, collecting them with shaking hands and clutching them close.

“I… she just… we promised each other that we’d be together after our parents died. So we’d never be alone again, and…” she starts, staring down at them; she suddenly gasps for air, crumples over herself, clutching the papers close. “I… I just…”

“Is there anyone I can contact for you?” Kakashi ventures. He’s quickly falling out of his depth. He’s no stranger to grief, but he can’t begin to comfort her; just look how well he’d dealt with his losses--daily visits to the last earthly evidence of his precious peoples’ existence to reaffirm his time with them.

“I…” She looks up at him, startled and becoming indignant, and Kakashi ducks his head.

“I’m sorry; I need to get back to the village.” It’s a weak excuse and he knows it is, but it’s all he has--more people to kill, more lives to end, more threads to cut, more people to leave crying alone like her. “I’m sorry, but…”

“Yes, I have--but--” She makes a growling, sobbing noise, lips pressed together, and then whips her head to the side, turning her face away from him, shoulders hunching defensively. “Yes. I’ll contact them. I’ll be alright. I’ll--go _away_ , then. I’ll live.”

Kakashi rises from his crouch and unzips a pocket on his vest, placing the scroll Owl had given him on the kitchen table. “This is… well, a way to contact me. Or someone who’ll be better at talking than me. Write anything you want--questions, thoughts, insults, whatever--onto it and sign your name in the marked place at the end. It’ll disappear and come to us, and we’ll do the best we can to reply.” He starts for the window, pauses at the edge of her counter as she speaks, mostly to herself.

“I suppose I shouldn’t have expected a killer to have comforting words.” Then, louder. “ _Go away._ ”

  
Kakashi goes.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i still don't really have internet but i thought i'd update with this chapter anyway while i was on campus because i'm excited about it :'D the company's people are supposed to come in this afternoon, so fingers crossed to have everything resolved by tonight!
> 
> alt title for the chapter: in which kakashi gets a clue and i'm a bit mean /SHOT

The village is quietly unsettled when he returns and it doesn’t take him long to find out why: Iruka is gone.

It’s a little over a month until exams and, typically, the teacher would be in the thick of Academy activity, making lesson plans or helping the students that need the extra help. This time, Iruka has been gone for several days--and Kakashi can tell from the tension in Shizune’s attitude when he casually brings up the subject with her after turning in his mission report to Tsunade that whatever mission Iruka was assigned to wasn’t supposed to take this long. Something happened, upper management has no information, and the worry of not knowing is almost unbearable. (Kakashi had swallowed his rising anger over sending the teacher out at all when _everyone_ knew he didn’t run missions as often anymore due to teaching and left the Tower before he’d done something regrettable.)

Kakashi waits for Owl instead. After the fourth night passes with no visit, he corners Tenzo and demands to know where his touchstone is.

Tenzo tells him, because there’s security clearance and then there’s the unspoken rules involving touchstones and this falls under the latter. Tenzo can’t say everything, of course--just that Owl is off on a burial mission.

In Sound territory.

Kakashi clenches his fists and seethes ungracefully in silence; hadn’t Owl said he wasn’t sent out of the village much anymore? So what had happened? Why was this so important that Tsunade had sent _Owl_?

( _Jobs that only we can do_ , comes his own voice from his memory, and he viciously shoves it aside even as shudders, shoulders slumping. Duty before one’s personal life--isn’t that how he’d always lived?

So why does the philosophy feel so empty now?)

It’s been five days since Iruka hadn’t shown up for class (the teacher’s kids, chattering amongst themselves in worried voices, give him that information, and it vexes Kakashi to know that he’d come back to the village one day after Iruka had left. And yet, in a slightly different vein, why had Kakashi himself told Iruka-sensei he was going on a mission? And why does he feel vaguely betrayed for not getting the same treatment?)

He shakes his head at himself. _It was only expected if Iruka-sensei had taken your words as seriously as you yourself had taken his. It was just a courtesy on his part--something to say other than goodbye._ (Shinobi had an aversion to the word, sometimes--it was too final, not open-ended. They were a superstitious lot overall; luck played such a big part on the battlefield that the shadow of its influence followed them home on the wings of the dead--whether Konoha’s fallen or another’s. If luck had been involved, danger and death had been involved. That was just the way things were.)

When Kakashi had gone to tell Iruka that he was leaving on a mission, when he’d given Owl the same alert--despite the sensei’s actual words, despite him telling Kakashi to come home safe, they’d both known that it was a potential, final goodbye. Unspoken, as if by not voicing the words and wishing for luck instead they could stave off the inevitable, but a goodbye nonetheless, the implied words tangled up in there.

And Iruka hadn’t even left a note, as was unspoken custom (Kakashi would sometimes come home to a few folded envelopes slid underneath his door, having been marked harmless by his wards, and find a few short sentences from Gai or Tenzo if they thought it would be bad. Could be bad. Instinct was foolish to ignore that way, and better safe than sorry. _Just in case_.) Neither had Owl. And Kakashi couldn’t figure out if that meant he was just an acquaintance to them or if their luck had just run out this time--if they hadn’t gotten a feeling in time to say something.

He blinks. Since when had thinking of them as one unit become so easy?

Kakashi straightens where he stands--the Academy is dark, the rooms and building technically closed for the night, and yet here he is anyway, standing at Iruka’s desk and staring out at open seats. He has Icha Icha (well, poetry disguised as Icha Icha) out, but he’s aware that he hasn’t turned a page in several minutes.

Why was he here?

Kakashi slowly flips a page with his thumb, thinking hard--why was he here, standing behind Iruka--no, Umino-sensei’s desk like this? What had driven him here? Kakashi rolls his jaw underneath the mask, then answers his own question, despite how vaguely embarrassed the answer makes him: _You’re here because you wanted to be closer to Iruka. He teaches his little hellions here, and you wanted to see if there was anything left of him that lingered._

Why Iruka?

Why indeed? When had he started calling his name so familiarly? This one takes a little longer: the time he’d gone to turn in his mission report after Owl had visited him… Iruka had still been Umino-sensei then. And then he’d gone to pester the teacher, watch him discreetly as he’d taught, and gotten caught, and then teased him. Kakashi had found Iruka a mystery--someone so well-beloved in a village of killers. Why was that? Why was he liked so?

_He’s honest._

But was that all?

 _He’s honest in his words_ and _his actions. He sees people for who they are, not by their reputation, even if it takes a while. (Like with Naruto. Like with me?) He has a strong sense of morality. He’s aware of his own limits and the limits of others and knows how to push them to get them moving in the right direction--and he does it in a way that is… subtle? No, not subtle--he_ teaches _. He helps others reach their own potential on their own, is a fantastic support, and we as a village trust him to provide that nudge or that pressure. That he instructs our children is enough evidence of that trust._

And you trust him as well?

_Yes._

Kakashi blinks. Well, there’s an interesting realization--he almost wants to pursue it, pick apart that definite conclusion and figure out why he’d answered so decisively, but forces himself to stay on topic.

Why do you trust Owl? (And he knows he trusts Owl. He’s fairly sure his subconscious wouldn’t allow him to fall in love with someone he wasn’t sure of.)

_Because he knows me. Because he knows himself. Because he’s willing to admit that he’s wrong even if it’ll make him lose face in order to further a relationship, further a person’s internal peace or happiness. Because he’s willing to sacrifice, and because he’s brave even in the face of danger. Because he’s my touchstone and frankly, too nice to have to deal with me._

Go earlier than that. Why did you offer to be his touchstone?

_Because someone that surrounded by those who love him shouldn’t suffer so alone. No-one should suffer so alone._

_Owl isn’t Iruka_ , he scolds himself automatically. _He’s in ANBU; he doesn’t have people who love him there._

And then pauses.

_Owl is not Iruka._

And blinks.

 _That statement is false_.

He can tell it’s false by the way his instincts are _screaming_ at him, just like they do when he catches someone in an obvious lie--except this time, the someone is _him_ and ‘Owl is not Iruka’ is _false_.

Why? Why is that statement false? Furiously, Kakashi traces his line of thought, combs over his memories of them both, scrambling for evidence--and finds far, far too much to be coincidental. Iruka’s familiarity with him, Kakashi’s own sense of ease. Iruka knowing where the tea in Kakashi’s apartment had been without being told--he’d served Kakashi ume blossom tea, the same as Owl’s first visit, echoing the similar situations, during which Kakashi was unmasked and had allowed a near-stranger into his home, sharing memories with him to ease a mental tension. Iruka’s movements: the various tics he had, the way that Iruka pulled at his ponytail and rubbed at his scar and the aborted motions Owl made that echoed it.

Owl’s _references_ : _Summer Blossoms_ after Kakashi had presented Iruka a copy (after the teacher had _spotted_ him, something he’d already known would be beyond anyone not a jonin of some sort). Iruka’s behavior: how he’d let the state of Kakashi’s mission report go, the countering reference to a dog that had kept him up--he, Hound, speaking to Owl after his quip about the hunter. Gai’s change in attitude after finding out Owl’s identity: of _course_ he’d trust Iruka. Everyone trusted Iruka. No wonder Owl didn’t talk about anyone else when on missions--he kept too many secrets and it would be too easy to expose Konoha to eavesdroppers.

The flash of a white scroll in Iruka’s hands, mostly-buried in a pile of paperwork, that matched a white-edged scroll that Owl had smeared Kakashi’s blood on that first night. Was that the mission he was on right now? (No, that had probably been the body retrieval mission. Maybe. Kakashi couldn’t say.)

Finding Kakashi in the hospital--deliberately? Was that his way of checking up on him?

And Iruka _would_ know if Kakashi left the village or came back. The man was practically at Ground Zero of Konoha’s shinobi gossip, what with his work in the Mission Room and at the Academy, and, well, Kakashi was all too familiar with the way Konoha loved to gossip about him.

Owl’s impassioned speech when he’d told Kakashi he was going to be his touchstone ( _that mischievousness and cleverness really was worthy of Konoha’s former top prankster_ ), when he’d said he’d seen him again and stated how he couldn’t have known that their last meeting had occurred: that sight hadn’t happened while he was Owl--it had been when he was _Iruka_. Iruka had seen him that morning after, had seen Kakashi languid and laconic and with his mask firmly in place for the rest of the world.

God, there were too many things, far more than just Iruka’s deliberate hints or Kakashi’s own blindness could account for (he’d teased Iruka about seeing underneath the underneath, and **_dear god_** was that embarrassing in hindsight) because, most tellingly of all, they’d unconsciously gravitated to each other. Iruka had been too familiar, too trusting of Kakashi for the supposed almost-acquaintance that Kakashi was supposed to have been--and Kakashi himself… well. He’d treated Iruka like he would have treated Owl and hadn’t even realized it until now. (And Owl had _told him_ point-blank that he had a job; there were only _so many_ steady hours a shinobi could keep and dammit, that was really obvious as well, in retrospect.)

But one last test, and Kakashi closes his book with a _snap_ , already reaching up to uncover the Sharingan.

Iruka’s classroom comes to life--not only with the residue of the past, the chakra patterns of way too many pre-genin crammed into too small a space--but with fine lines and the memory of humming wires. There’s chakra-conductive metal stretched in spider’s-silk-fine threads all over the floor of the room, criss-crossing lines forming a grid pattern like the one on the Fetching scroll, the entire thing cued to Iruka’s chakra, Owl’s chakra, the sight of it triggering the memory of sunlit water and calm. A defense centered around heightened senses--no wonder Iruka could squash a problem in his classroom before it really formed.

(And no wonder his class got the prodigies, the talented children, or the children of the clans; he could defend them if anything snuck past the village’s walls or if there was an attack from within--and very few enemies would expect sweet, kind Iruka-sensei to have the chakra or the skill to back up that fearsome temper. Kakashi knows better now--Iruka had _earned_ his hunter’s name.)

He closes the Sharingan--and drops heavily into Iruka’s chair, the wood creaking underneath him. Kakashi hangs his head back over the supporting slats and exhales one long breath.

Iruka’s mother had fled Mist. The Sandaime had been personally interested in Iruka. Iruka had graduated from the Academy at eleven and made chunin at sixteen--five years in which there was a distinct dearth of data. That period of time wasn’t the only place that didn’t have enough information. Kakashi would bet his best set of kunai that Iruka had a much more comprehensive (and truthful) file in the more heavily-protected Archives--if it wasn’t locked in the Hokage’s desk itself.

Kakashi momentarily debates breaking into the more heavily guarded Archives to get a better idea of the man he’s taken as his touchstone (not to speak of Iruka being _his_ touchstone)... and eventually discards his potential plans. Somehow, it feels a little like a betrayal to go looking when he could ask Owl--Iruka--himself when he came back. After all, Iruka hadn’t lied to him--beyond the usual secrets ANBU keep.

(Kakashi refuses to consider the possibility of Iruka not coming back. He _will_. He _has to_. There’s too much that’s been unsaid between them.)

Kakashi sits in the quiet of the Academy for minutes longer, listening to the building settle around him, and then gets to his feet.

Right now, the only thing he can do is play the waiting game.

* * *

It takes another two days for Iruka to come home, and Kakashi doesn’t even look up from his book when he feels his traps disable. He recognizes the chakra signature of the man outside, after all, and so just says, quietly, as Owl slides through the window frame like water, “Welcome back, Iruka.”

Kakashi finds himself facedown on his table in the next second, a hand fisted in his hair and a kunai threatening the base of his skull.


	19. Chapter 19

“Ah,” Kakashi manages after a moment (slightly inarticulately, considering the way his cheek is mashed against his table’s stained surface). “I think I startled you.”

The fist in his hair tightens for a second--then loosens as it lets go; the presence behind Kakashi drifts away between one breath and the next like a restless ghost and Kakashi hears the faint chime of bells as he straightens, rubbing at his left cheekbone and gingerly touching the Sharingan through the fabric of the patch he’s wearing. _That is probably going to bruise_ , he thinks ruefully before he straightens further, spreading his hands, palms up, on the table’s surface.

He doesn’t bother looking for Iruka; he knows he’s in a genjutsu and doesn’t fight it, instead lifting his chin and baring the line of his throat, pushing down every instinct and reflex telling him to fight.

His back is to the window, closed now (though his traps and wards are still disabled), and he keeps his breathing quiet and even as he lets Iruka prowl about the living room, assessing him from under the cover of his illusion.

“I think I should apologize for startling you,” Kakashi says into the apparent silence. He pitches his voice to be heard through his entire apartment; he’s _fairly_ sure that Iruka is still in the room with him, but there’s always the chance that the hunter took the opportunity to scout the area to be sure of his own safety.

“I should also apologize for being exceedingly dense,” Kakashi adds. “I think I probably shouldn’t take the title of ‘genius’ this time; I really took quite a while to pick up on the clues that you were dropping.” He pauses and sniffs the air once, deliberately, and gets the scent of soft powder, like talcum, and sweat and blood and Iruka. “But I really am glad that you’re back--and that I had the opportunity to tell you all of this in person.”

Kakashi blinks and Owl drops the genjutsu in the moment of darkness; he’s standing close to Kakashi, right by his side, actually, and the silver-haired man can feel the hunter’s body heat even as Iruka seizes Kakashi’s (still bruised) chin in his fingers and _yanks_ his face down to a normal angle.

“Don’t _do_ that,” Owl hisses, and it’s a sound more befitting the animal that shares his name than the man, sibilant and horrifyingly level and far, far too calm for the way Iruka has shut out the world.

Kakashi keeps his chin where it is when Owl tears his fingers away, the motion too sharp compared to the hunter’s typical grace; Owl shoves Kakashi’s open hands off of the table as well with a similarly sharp movement before straightening and staring down at Kakashi, stilling back to silence.

Kakashi looks up at Owl and meets the man’s eyes in the moonlight from the window; Iruka’s brown is distant and sharp and cold like the glaciers against the horizons of the Land of Snow. Kakashi stares into their depths for one long moment, then says, “Ah. That’s how it is this time? Alright,” before getting to his feet gracefully. “Come along, then. You’re filthy with dirt.”

Kakashi risks sticking his hands back into the pockets of his pajama pants and lets his shoulders slump into their practiced slouch as he saunters down the hall to the bathroom; Owl ghosts in his wake, utterly silent save for the occasional muffled chime of the bells at his belt.

Kakashi steps inside the bathroom, flicks on the light, then stops right inside the door and turns where he stands to cast his eye down at Owl’s sandals. “Shoes off. Leave them next to the door.”

 

And Owl bends down after a moment’s pause to start working at the mud-and-blood crusted buckles of his sandals, exposing the back of his neck to Kakashi with the motion.

Kakashi stifles the sigh of relief he wants to make for guessing the correct course of action and turns to start running a bath instead, pulling out a wooden stool from its home beside the sink cabinet with a foot as he does so. He hears the thump of one sandal hitting the floor, then the other, then a rustle as they’re rearranged; Owl steps into the bathroom, leaving vaguely muddy footprints on the tile.

“Vest and belt on the hooks. Mask as well. Clothes in the corner, not in the hamper,” Kakashi instructs, and this time the pause is less than a second; Owl moves for the single row of hooks Kakashi has mounted on the bathroom wall and unzips his vest around the mud, unbuckles his belt and hangs both up carefully. Owl makes a motion towards his pants and his kimono, then stills as he stands, facing the wall, his hands flexing as though in indecision.

Kakashi frowns as he looks up from rolling up his pajama pants to his knees, then his eye flicks from Owl’s back to a few darker-stained areas on the hunter’s clothing; he analyzes the situation before moving towards the hunter, bare feet slap-scuffing on the tile, reaching out to gently touch a few places on Owl’s body, fingers and gaze clinical.

“They’re dried in, huh?” he asks as he examines Owl, and the man responds with a microscopic nod. Kakashi takes another calculated risk and draws a kunai from Owl’s hanging belt as he circles around the hunter; Owl stiffens, going a little more on alert, but doesn’t attack him on reflex. Which is excellent. Kakashi doesn’t want to have to fight him off.

“Starting now,” Kakashi warns before he makes the first cut; he slices away Owl’s clothing from him, removing as much cloth as he can from where it’s dried to Owl’s wounds. He works quickly, tossing the rags into the corner before cleaning the kunai off and resheathing it; Owl relaxes marginally as the blade disappears.

“Gauntlets, gloves, mask, et cetera,” Kakashi reminds, then wanders off to fill a bucket from the tub and turn off the water. There’s rustles as Owl obeys, Kakashi using the time to collect what he’ll need from cabinets and counters; Owl is nude by the time he’s gathered everything.

“Owl,” Kakashi says. “Sit here, please.”

 

And when Owl turns around like water flowing, Kakashi feels the breath leave his lungs at the affirmation of the hunter’s identity, his eye flicking up automatically to catalogue Iruka’s familiar face, his distinctive scar--it’s Iruka and yet it’s not, because Iruka-sensei would never have that look in his eyes, as though his heart had been frozen solid deep below the surface of a fathomless lake. Kakashi swallows his sorrow over this reality, keeps the emotion from his face, as Owl seats himself fluidly on the stool.

Kakashi wraps rags soaked in warm water against the cloth-stuck injuries, a few of which are bleeding sluggishly from the hunter’s motions, and kneels in front of Owl, taking his chin gently in his fingers and turning his face from side to side.

“My, my, Owl, I think you need a shave,” Kakashi comments lightly, eye curving up in a smile he doesn’t quite feel as he rubs the pad of his thumb against the hunter’s ragged stubble; Owl’s eyes flick to his for a moment before they dart away again. Kakashi doesn’t take offense to it, just humming to himself instead as he squirts shaving cream into his hands and lathers Owl up. He uses a straight razor because it’s easy for him to maintain, control, and his movements are efficient and deliberate as he works down cheeks and jaw and lips. (Kakashi ignores how almost unbearably intimate this act in particular is and focuses on not getting himself maimed by Owl.)

He wipes off the last of the shaving foam before standing and grabbing the bucket. “Hair next,” and one of Owl’s hands goes up to hold a rag soaking an injury on his shoulder in place as Kakashi pours the water over the hunter’s head. Owl works the tie out of his caked hair himself, and it takes two more buckets of water before the worst of the mud and powder is out of it.

Owl answers before Kakashi can voice the question on his tongue, feeling the taller man’s touch to his hair, and says quietly, “It was ash,” before falling silent again; Kakashi feels mingled relief and horror this time--relief that the ice in Owl’s voice is thawing and horror when he realizes that the powder he’d smelled was human remains, dehydrated so fine they clung.

He packs the latter emotion away--now is not the time to ask questions, even if Kakashi desperately wants to know the details of the mission gone bad, the story behind the massive tattoo Owl had uncovered on his back, and the answers to a myriad of other small questions he has about the inconsistencies in Iruka’s files.

Instead, Kakashi works shampoo into Owl’s hair, rinsing and lathering and rinsing once more before collecting Owl’s locks into a simple wet twist and letting it fall to one side of Owl’s neck.

“Wounds next.” Kakashi removes each rag and peels the bloodstained cloth out of the gash it accompanies, picking out fibers with a pair of tweezers from the first aid kit when necessary. “Poison?”

“Already out,” Owl replies, and Kakashi nods before adding:

“Can you heal these or do you want me to stitch them? Or let them heal some naturally?”

Owl is still for a heartbeat or two before he makes the seals for a mid-level healing jutsu; he turns it on the deepest of his wounds and by the time he’s finished, all of his injuries are shallow enough to just require simple bandages. Kakashi whistles, impressed, and Owl’s shoulders shake once in a small laugh before they fall still again.

Kakashi gets up to toss the last bits of Owl’s uniform into the pile it’s already made, catching Owl’s eyes as he turns back around.

“Guess I get to wash your back now,” Kakashi says, adding his best leer for effect, and this time the hunter’s laugh is an honest, brighter thing, some of the light coming back into the man’s eyes.

“You’ve been reading too many of those romance novels,” Iruka teasingly scolds, and Kakashi is relieved enough to honestly smile back, lips and eye both curving.

“Hmm, maybe you’re right,” he says cheerfully before proceeding to fulfill his word anyway, giving Iruka a thorough scrubdown of blood and dirt and old sweat before he lets him get in the tub. Kakashi takes the opportunity given by said scrubbing to let his chakra linger at his hands, presses it soft and electric against the echoes of the freezing cold chasm he senses in Iruka’s aura.

It’s still too deep, but the bottom of the fathomless sea is slowly rising to meet them; by the time Iruka settles into the tub, his chakra resembles a vast coldwater lake--distant and cold, but there’s earth and water both, even if the latter is too far away to comfortably sink down to. Still, it’s an improvement on the yawning chasm of before.

“Alright,” Kakashi says as he perches for a moment on the edge of the bathtub. “Three things. Wait, no, four things.” He holds up four fingers and stares at the bathroom’s ceiling as he touches the first finger. “Is there anything time-sensitive you need to have delivered to the Hokage?”

Iruka makes an ‘mhm’ noise. “Second pocket from the zipper on the left side. Dead Sound nin bodies: please get them to Tsunade before they spoil.” Kakashi finds the scroll in question and sets it a little gingerly on the edge of the counter to take back out into the apartment.

“Okay. Second--” Kakashi starts, “would you like anything to eat and do you need to make it yourself?”

“Uh… a sandwich would be nice. Maybe some tea. And you can make it.” Iruka doesn’t look at Kakashi but flushes anyway as he finishes with, “I trust you.”

“I know,” Kakashi says soberly, and Iruka gives him a tiny, bittersweet smile before looking away again.

“Okay, then third and/or fourth things… are you planning to stay the night? And if you are, do you need clothes? Specifically, do you need underwear, because I’m not sure it’s socially acceptable to lend guests or touchstones underwear, so I thought I’d ask.”

Iruka stares at him for a long moment, then abruptly flushes dark red when he realizes what Kakashi is _really_ offering. He doesn’t break eye contact, though, when he says, “I’ll stay. Clothes won’t be necessary, thank you,” quite cheekily, and Kakashi is torn between rising excitement and mild exasperation at Iruka’s words and tone.

“Alright. Suit yourself,” Kakashi replies, and stands to leave the bathroom; he can feel Iruka’s eyes on his back and ass and doesn’t think he imagines the ‘oh, I will’ from the hunter.

Kakashi smothers his snicker and goes to the window, opening it and whistling a low, quavering sound infused with chakra into the night, requesting the attention of an ANBU in the immediate vicinity. He doesn’t have to wait long; there’s a discreet burst of chakra from a teleportation jutsu on a nearby rooftop and then the faint flicker of an aura as the ANBU moves close. (Kakashi frowns to himself; must be one of the newbies out on rounds--the second chakra presence beside the first is much less detectable.)

A bird-shaped mask pokes itself over the edge of the roof, followed by a bear-shaped mask as the first hauls itself over the edge of the building and sticks to the brick underneath Kakashi’s window.

“Hound, sir?” the bird asks, and Kakashi IDs her as Heron, finally. Bear lingers on the other roof, obviously keeping a weather eye on them as the more-senior member.

Kakashi leans out the window, handing Iruka’s scroll to Heron. “Take this to the Hokage. It has Sound nin corpses in it. And tell her Owl is back from his mission but will report in tomorrow.”

He sees the kunoichi’s eyes widen just a fraction behind her mask as she processes the information and its implications, but her body language doesn’t betray her otherwise as she accepts the scroll from him. She sketches a very shallow bow and murmurs, “Good night, Hound, sir,” before teleporting away again, Bear forming the same seals to follow her.

Kakashi closes the window and rearms his defenses before going to make Iruka a sandwich and pour him a glass of the now-cold green tea Kakashi had been drinking while waiting for him to return. He brings both back to the bathroom and then stops inside the door as Iruka snorts from the tub.

“How the hell did I not notice those pants earlier?” Iruka asks almost rhetorically as he eyeballs Kakashi’s patterned flannel pj bottoms; Kakashi looks down automatically at the recurring motif of little cartoon dogs chasing little cartoon cats against the faded yellow of said pants before shrugging.

“You were preoccupied,” Kakashi replies lightly, and goes to sit on the edge of the tub again as he passes Iruka his sandwich and glass of tea. He Very Thoughtfully ignores how gross it is that Iruka is eating in the bath and just makes sure the man isn’t going to choke or get the bread soggy with bathwater before standing again to start cleaning a little, wiping up the mud on the bathroom floor, moving Owl’s shoes, debating whether or not to toss the now-tattered remains of Owl’s uniform--

“Leave them alone; I’m pretty sure I need to dig out the pockets,” Iruka calls from the tub, and Kakashi sighs as though severely put upon and leaves the heap where it is.

He does toss the bloodstained rags he’d used into the washing machine, then waits patiently as Iruka sets the empty plate and glass down on the tiled floor, getting out of the tub with water sliding off of him in sheets.

He catches the towel Kakashi throws at him and starts drying himself off as he bends over to unplug the tub, letting it drain while he pats gingerly at his wounds. He seats himself back on the stool without being prompted by Kakashi and squeezes his damp hair as dry as he can while Kakashi starts cleaning and bandaging the gash in his thigh and side. Iruka eventually makes a discontented noise, lobs the towel into the hamper, and makes the signs for the drying jutsu he’d used during their first meeting as intimates, as ANBU, as touchstones, what felt like a lifetime ago, and carefully slicks the water out of his hair from the roots down, leaving it dry and glossy behind his fingers. (Kakashi automatically dodges the splash of said water as it hits the tile, then eyeballs the ensuing puddle with mild amusement; Iruka shrugs and says, only faintly embarrassed, “My hair retains a lot of water,” then stays very still underneath Kakashi’s hands as the man bandages the cut down his chest, the gouge out of his shoulder, and the smallish scrape on his right forearm, near the crook of his elbow.)

(Kakashi kisses the dip of delicate skin above that injury after he ties the bandage securely and smiles as he sees Iruka’s cock twitch out of the corner of his eye; he looks up into Iruka’s gaze, and the chill of the mission gone bad is still there, but is rapidly fading underneath the greedy dilation of his pupils.)

Kakashi stands and picks up the glass and the plate, setting them both on the bathroom counter before kicking the stool back to its rightful place after Iruka gets up. Kakashi saunters to the door, pauses in the frame, and glances over his shoulder.

“Coming?” he asks teasingly, and Iruka jolts out of his stare and hurries to catch up with him, slapping the light switch on the wall as he trails Kakashi down the hall, plunging the bathroom into darkness behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i have internet again! also the next chapter is E, so i'll update the rating and tags in a few days when i post it /sweats a little and laughs, apologizes because of the weird cutoff of this chapter--i had to split it here because it was too long


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **a.n.** : just as a quick headsuplikething, there's one very very very brief, nondetailed reference to noncon of a background character in the weird offset paragraph near the last 1/3rd of the chapter
> 
> also if you want atmosphere, put [howl - florence + the machine](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZweDwbJ_Ic) on repeat once you hit the hot and heavy part /SHOT A BIT (man, but i hope people enjoy this chapter.. i feel like i'm out of practice on my 18+ writing... :""D)

Kakashi half-shuts the bedroom door after them, leaving the room in near-darkness, and stands at the foot of his bed, lips quirked to one side in a lopsided smile; he stares at Iruka, who tentatively approaches him and carefully winds an arm around Kakashi’s slim waist, fingertips brushing against the worn-thin material of the old t-shirt Kakashi is wearing.

Their lips meet in a kiss, chaste and closed-mouthed for now, and it’s silent in the room save for the mingled, matching breaths of two men trained in stealth.

(“You don’t have to do this,” Iruka whispers against the skin of the cheek he’d bruised with Kakashi’s table, lips caressing the blooming injury in unspoken apology, and Kakashi laughs just as quietly, the vocalization more of a soft vibration in his chest than a sound.

“But I want to,” he says, pouting, and Iruka pulls back to stare at him in disbelief. Kakashi feels Iruka’s cock twitch and heat against the length of his thigh, and smiles at the thrill of triumph that brings to him.

“You’re not just another warm body,” Iruka suddenly says, vocal fierceness a contrast against the gentle hands reaching for the cloth that covers the Sharingan; Kakashi lets Iruka’s hesitant fingers untie it and slip it off his head, lets them drop it to the floor, and turns his head to kiss Iruka’s palm, answering him that way.

_I know. Thank you. I wouldn’t offer to just anyone._

And Iruka’s sharp intake of breath is his reply, and suddenly his lips are against his and this kiss is eons away from their first, Iruka’s mouth open and hot and demanding, the man seizing Kakashi’s face in his hands and keeping their contact close as Iruka bulls them closer to Kakashi’s bed with his greater bulk.)

The backs of Kakashi’s knees hit the mattress; he wraps arms around Iruka’s naked waist and pulls them both backwards, falling on the bed to a chorus of protesting springs. Iruka snorts into Kakashi’s mouth at the sound, and Kakashi laughs as well before moaning as Iruka finds a sensitive spot along the line of his neck, laving the flat of his tongue against the ridge of a failed attempt to slit his throat that stretches below his ear. Iruka makes a content noise in reply and skims the backs of his hands and fingers against Kakashi’s flanks, his ribcage--and tweaks his nipples, which makes Kakashi’s back arch into a bow and an embarrassing sound leave his lips as pure sensation shoots straight to his groin, his knees going watery.

Iruka grunts in surprise and pulls away to stare down at Kakashi, hands pausing where they are. “ _Really?_ ” he asks incredulously, and Kakashi glares at him mulishly in reply, just _daring_ him to make a disparaging comment; Iruka’s mouth quirks before he bends his head to kiss him again, murmuring, “Oh, this I _have_ to see,” quickly stripping Kakashi out of his soft t-shirt.

(The next few minutes consist of increasingly lewd acts committed against Kakashi’s nipples, the silver-haired man half-heartedly protesting in between embarassingly slutty moans. Iruka just grins, the words rolling right off of him as his lips stretch against Kakashi’s blushed skin with his smile, before he simultaneously sucks and rolls the nub he’s captured between his teeth; Kakashi actually _yells_ this time, making some sort of noise along the lines of a pitchy, “AHNN--” before yanking viciously at Iruka’s hair, grumbling.)

“You keep that up and I’m going to come before you get yours,” Kakashi hisses at him, then shudders as Iruka lets the swollen bit of flesh go to look up at him.

“And who says I’m not enjoying myself?” Iruka replies mischievously, eyes curving up in a smile--that turns decidedly lecherous. “You think I could make you come with just these?” He looks back down at Kakashi’s chest as though seriously considering the idea, and Kakashi resists his automatic reflex of looking as well, already knowing what he’d find and sparing himself the embarrassment. “They’re all pink and puffy and _cute_.” Kakashi shudders again, thighs squeezing Iruka’s hips as his knees try to come together, when Iruka runs one rough, callused fingertip around the rim of a swollen areola, pressing gently and grinning at the give from the blood-swollen flesh. He turns that grin back up at Kakashi and says, almost accusingly, “I never knew you could be _cute_.”

“It’s not usually a characteristic I cultivate for the publi--” Kakashi starts sarcastically, then cuts himself off by throwing his head back against the sheets when Iruka _pinches_. “FUCK! Ah, _fuck_ , _AH_ \--god _dammit_ , Iruka, I was _serious_ about coming.” He can feel his underwear and pants sticking to him from Iruka’s teasing; he’s close, really, really, unfairly close considering how _not close_ Iruka is. Iruka sighs as though very put upon and (deliciously) slides back up Kakashi’s body to his face to give him a kiss that starts fierce and goes gentle, easing into a soft sliding of lips and tongues against each other. Kakashi practically purrs against Iruka’s mouth, and the quality of the kiss brings him back enough from the brink that he can think a little more clearly.

“Honestly, what do you even want to do?” Kakashi grumbles at Iruka as he takes the opportunity afforded by his temporary lucidity to grab double-handfuls of Iruka’s ass. It’s a really nice ass. Kakashi is sort of abstractly envious of it, being so nice and attached to Iruka all the time, and then loses whatever vague focus he had as Iruka rolls his hips, grinding down against him.

“Whatever you’ll give me,” Iruka murmurs against Kakashi’s mouth, hands creeping down as he sits up a little afterwards to skin Kakashi out of the rest of his clothes, leaving both of them equally bare; Kakashi inhales sharply and whines a little in his sinuses when his cock pops free and slaps against his stomach, leaving a sticky string of precome connecting the head and the muscles of his stomach.

“Do you want to fuck?” he manages after a second; Iruka doesn’t even pause as he settles against Kakashi again, the heat from him overwhelming and comforting all at once.

“I thought that was what we were doing,” Iruka quips, nipping at Kakashi’s collarbones, and his tone is light but his eyes are as serious as anyone’s can be considering how blown out Iruka’s pupils are.

Kakashi looks, simply _looks_ at him for a long moment, weighing the words and the circumstances--and then sighs and lets his head fall back on the sheets again.

“Fine, but I’m not going to concede the clean part of the bed to you, no matter what happens. House privilege,” Kakashi says, and Iruka makes this terribly amused snorting sound before nipping the bottom of Kakashi’s chin where he’s exposed it.

“No wonder the Hokage calls you a brat,” Iruka teases, starting to roll his hips in a languid motion. “With that sort of attitude… and _I_ was the one on a mission for the past week.” He punctuates his statement with an especially sharp motion that pushes a little blurt of precome out of Kakashi’s slit, and Iruka grins at the twitch it causes, as pleased as a cat with the cream, already speeding up. “Who got injured and had to fight off far too many Sound nin because they were waiting for me, _ambushed_ me, the _bastards_ \--” And he tucks his head into the crook of Kakashi’s neck and Kakashi’s hands squeeze Iruka’s ass and run up and down the muscled, rhythmically rippling length of his back as Iruka continues in a fraying whisper.

“--and I had to circle the area for _days_ , keeping an eye on the mission objective, picking them off one by one--” His breath is becoming ragged, the slide of skin against skin going smooth and damp with sweat as pleasure and heat rise between them. “--couldn’t even risk genjutsu because it’s damn _Sound_ , and I don’t think I’ve used that much ninjutsu since Naruto left, and I, _ah_ \--” Iruka gasps, exhaling in pleasure as his hips start jerking irregularly, chasing his pleasure as all his remaining focus going to keeping his words clear. “I killed the entire squad, Kakashi, _all of them_ after too many days of cat-and-mouse and-- _fuck!_ \--and by the time I got back to her she’d started to _rot_ ; she’d been tossed aside like so much fucking _garbage_ , and I--” Iruka’s nails dig into Kakashi’s shoulders hard enough to draw blood as a snarl rips out of him, and Kakashi catches the glint of bared teeth and wide eyes in the small amount of light that leaks in around his curtains.

 

“--I wanted to kill them all _again_ and instead I took back the corpses of the two _bastards_ that violated her for shits and giggles to the Hokage and gave her and the rest of them a burial in ash because there was too much putrid liquid to **burn**.”

 

And Iruka sinks teeth into the meat of Kakashi’s neck where it meets his shoulder, breaking the skin, and Kakashi groans long and shaky at the flash of pain paired with the sensation of Iruka’s cum shooting hot and wet against his sweat-soaked skin and into the humid space between them; Iruka rides the pulses of his orgasm, hips jerking sharp and too-hard against Kakashi’s before he eases into stillness on top of him.

Kakashi exhales unsteadily as the cessation of motion against him leaves him right on the edge, vainly wriggling under Iruka’s deadweight trying to get that last bit of friction, and Iruka removes his teeth from Kakashi’s flesh and sighs long and gusty in his ear before he rolls upright and slides a hand down his abdomen and Kakashi’s and takes Kakashi in hand. His cum and Kakashi’s precome is just enough wetness; Iruka strips him hard and fast and merciless, eyes distant and sorrowful even as he watches Kakashi unravel eagerly.

“And the worst part of it was that I taught her _better_ than that,” Iruka whispers, Kakashi catching it only by the virtue of the Sharingan seeing the movement of his lips. “She should have thought to check where she was being herded to; if she had, maybe she would have been able to find another group of Konoha nin, would have survived the squad of Sound, would have _lived_.”

Iruka squeezes him, and Kakashi arches his back as he comes _hard_ , hands helplessly scrabbling for a grip on the sheets as he pulses his release and swallows his cry and thinks he hears or sees or senses Iruka say, “Rest in peace, Tsubaki Kiko,” as he drowns in pleasure.

 

Iruka strokes him through it, keeps his hand moving until Kakashi starts to soften and the ecstasy tips over to discomfort while his nerves and chakra pathways recover; Iruka watches him (panting, sweaty, and inelegantly trying to catch his breath) with a fond, soft look in his gaze, the ice melted and the harsh bitterness from his mission gone for now ( _but not buried deep enough,_ Kakashi thinks muzzily). Iruka fishes around for a second and comes up with Kakashi’s t-shirt, which he uses to clean both of them, tossing it away at the door afterwards.

Kakashi languidly rolls his body and hips, maneuvering himself up the bed to the pillows in a decidedly unerotic sort of fashion due to his postcoital bonelessness, and Iruka snorts, laughing involuntarily at his ungainliness before joining him, pulling the top layer of sheets off the bed and out from under Kakashi, dumping the soiled cloth on the floor.

“Why in the _world_ do you have so many sheets?” Iruka asks as he bullies Kakashi under the layers beneath; Kakashi mumbles his reply into his pillow and gets gently prodded in the side for being incoherent.

He sighs and turns his face enough to clearly say, “Low body temp and I’m a skinny asshole; I get cold easy,” before sullenly burying his face into the pillow again.

Iruka laughs softly at the motion, kissing the top of Kakashi’s head unexpectedly tenderly, and murmurs teasingly, “Aw, don’t sulk, brat; it’s unbecoming.”

Kakashi just rolls enough to lever himself up, placing a quick, chaste kiss against Iruka’s lips before flopping back down.

Iruka arranges himself beside him, and they don’t cuddle; they’re ANBU and jonin and vulnerable in their sleep, so for all that they’d like to, their bodies won’t allow it, their reflexes trained too sharp to risk each other, no matter how appealing a morning waking up entangled with the other sounds. Maybe it’ll come later (and Kakashi is very sure there’ll be a later now, somehow).

Instead, they fall asleep side-by-side, their forearms touching each other and their pinkies linked, Iruka’s chakra pressing sleepy and sex-warm against the softened crackle of Kakashi’s.


	21. Chapter 21

They wake up--or wake each other up--at some hour of the morning; Kakashi’s internal clock informs him it’s fifteen minutes past five.

He sighs and rolls over onto his side, and Iruka echoes the motion, turning and sliding closer to wrap his arms around Kakashi. He yelps when Kakashi’s cold hands and feet come into contact with his bare skin, and Kakashi laughs a little ruefully. “Sorry. Told you I get cold; you didn’t heed the posted warnings.”

“If there were actually posted warnings about you, your list would be the length of my _arm_ ,” Iruka grumbles back.

Kakashi leers at him. “You know what _else_ is the length of your arm--?”

Iruka makes a squawking sort of noise and tries to smother Kakashi with the pillow he’s co-opted; they wrestle under the sheets and one thing leads to another and that’s how Kakashi ends up with a matching bite mark on his other shoulder, gained from bringing both of them off into his hand.

(Iruka had stared at him when Kakashi had spit into his palm to get it slick enough to make the slide comfortable, and Kakashi had quirked an eyebrow at him as he’d wrapped fingers around them both, their heads bumping together with a small burst of pleasure.

“What?” Kakashi had asked, suddenly feeling a little self-conscious; Iruka had hastily waved a hand in the air between them, sensing the emotion.

“No, no, its not bad--it just reminded me again of how _human_ you are.” And Iruka had smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners with the breadth of it, and added, “It’s really nice. I’m really, really glad,” blushing as he did so.

Kakashi’s heart had done a swimmy little flip in his chest, and his expression must have shown some of it, because Iruka had pressed closer and kissed him passionately, wiping all thoughts that didn’t pertain to ‘hot,’ ‘mmm,’ ‘yes,’ and ‘more’ out of his head until they were lying panting in the sticky aftermath.)

Kakashi just breathes and enjoys the rhythmic, fuzzy throbs of pleasure through him in the afterglow, Iruka lying close in his arms and the dark-haired man’s chakra pressing close and warm around them both. Kakashi thinks it feels like a pond at the height of noon or maybe right after, the water they’re floating in pleasantly heated and shimmering with refracted sunlight.

“Hey,” Kakashi eventually says, breaking the silence between them. Iruka makes a quiet, questioning noise then yawns, which is way too cute for words and earns him a kiss from Kakashi.

“Stopppp,” Iruka whines a few minutes of making out later. “You’re gonna make me come again and then my dick will be sore.”

Kakashi snorts and chokes at the same time, which is distinctly unpleasant, but relents (because the man does have a point), squeezing Iruka closer and finishing his earlier thought. “You alright now?” He peers a little anxiously down at Iruka; he’s never been a touchstone before and he’s not entirely sure he’s doing this right, because Kakashi can still look into Iruka’s eyes and catch flickers of darker emotions: rage and pain and something that looks an awful lot like regret in the depths of the hunter’s brown.

Iruka blinks at him sleepily, and there’s a flicker of those shadows again before he smiles a little bittersweetly and says, “Yes. You’re doing fine, Kakashi. It just takes me a while to find my feet again if I step awry.” He nuzzles closer and contritely licks the mark he’d made on Kakashi’s right shoulder. “It’s why I left the main list. The mission turnover was getting too high and I could feel myself fraying. I started looking at my kids like they were future soldiers, potential enemies or allies, and like they were in their graves already. I knew I had to go.”

Kakashi makes a soft, understanding noise; his departure had been much the same way, if a little less willing on his part--he’d thrown every test the psych-nins gave him, but he couldn’t fool the Sandaime. He’d gotten too fierce, too careless in the wake of the war and Rin’s death, as if he’d been subconsciously chasing after his former precious people with all the agony and will the teenage him could muster. Kakashi owed Hiruzen his life, and that was why he said hello to him whenever he visited the Memorial Stone--not because Kakashi had been especially close to the Third, but because he owed his present and his future to the man and believed in acknowledging his debts.

Iruka kisses the hollow of Kakashi’s throat where his neck meets his collarbones, and Kakashi responds by pulling the man up to give him a proper kiss before letting go.

“I told the Hokage you’d report in the morning,” Kakashi explains as he stretches and sits up, taking a moment to ruefully stare down at his hickey-adorned chest. “You should change your bandages.”

“I’ll take you up on the offer of clothes as well,” Iruka replies as he slides out of bed, doing his own stretching standing up. “And I’ll borrow some clothes from you this time.”

“Which uniform?”

A spasm of darker emotion flickers across Iruka’s face before he sighs and combs his fingers through his hair. “Standard, I think. Better let the morning people see me out and about and let the news spread that way so no-one gets suspicious. Besides, I think your clothes will fit me… let me borrow a vest as well.”

“All of mine have the jonin patch on them.”

“So?” Iruka grins at him, sharp and wicked and above all _mischievous_. “I promise I’ll sew it back on afterwards,” he adds, voice dripping with innuendo.

Kakashi can’t help but laugh. “How in the world did you manage to make that lewd?” he asks rhetorically before he goes to his closet to start pulling out clothes. _Iruka_ may be confident that Kakashi’s clothes will fit, but Kakashi himself eyeballs Iruka’s well-muscled chest and thicker frame and looks for the biggest sizes he has, because that small, one-inch difference in _height_ isn’t going to matter too much if Iruka is busting out of the _seams_.

His search is hampered a little by Iruka pressing up tight against his back, hips grinding against his ass, and Kakashi’s hands still as he’s rather vividly reminded that they’re both naked.

“I thought you were complaining about your dick being sore,” Kakashi grumbles at him.

Iruka muffles a laugh against the base of Kakashi’s neck. “It won’t be if I give it a nice, soft place to rest?” he tries almost hopefully, and laughs alongside Kakashi at himself. “Damn, that was Icha Icha levels of bad. Sorry; I really _do_ believe that you deserve more romancing, but…”

Kakashi tilts back his head and glances a little over his shoulder at Iruka, who looks away even as his hips roll again.

“I’m…” Iruka tries, then bites his lower lip and squeezes his eyes tightly closed; he looks exhausted and torn and _devastated_. Kakashi automatically reaches out with his chakra (so easy, being skin-close like they are), and shivers at the gaping chasm he finds in Iruka’s aura, a vast underwater canyon like the seafloor of lands beyond Wave, freezing cold, remote--and _hungry_. Iruka seizes him, drinks up the meager amounts of electric warmth that Kakashi can spare, and swallows it whole.

“Bring me back,” Iruka whispers against the first knob of Kakashi’s spine. “Bring me back to a safe port and anchor me strong. I want to go _home_.”

And Kakashi doesn’t offer the obvious response--that Iruka already _is_ home, that he’s in Konoha--because he knows Iruka may physically be here, but his _mind_ isn’t; even if this isn’t Owl right now, even if Iruka isn’t in mission readiness, his head is still out there in the field, retracing and reanalyzing and worrying over the possibilities and potential endings in the past week. He cannot let it go--and Kakashi is familiar with this, with the frustrating, circuitous thoughts and the endless guilt and regret, and the litany of ‘what could have been.’ It’s torture in its own way, and the only way out when caught so strong is finding a way to distract the mind via the body until the mind has numbed itself and accepted this reality.

Kakashi has done it with booze, with women, with men, sometimes all three at once, but never with anyone he’s truly _treasured_ , desired to protect, and this territory is thus familiar and untrod all at once.

“Please,” Iruka mumbles against his skin, and Kakashi inhales, centering the breath underneath his sternum as he withdraws his chakra from Iruka’s. The man makes a pained noise at it but lets him go, and his voice when he speaks again is rueful. “I’m greedy. I want to take it all and _forget_ , just for a little while--” He laughs and the edge of it is ragged and the sound weak. “Fuck. Sorry, I’m so sorry, Kakashi; I can’t--”

“Iruka.”

Iruka stops his restless motions, the shifting of his weight and his roaming hands and the circle of his hips and maybe even his breathing for a second, and Kakashi says into the stillness, “You have me. I’ll be your anchor for now, but there’s things we both need to do.” He turns in the circle of Iruka’s arms and stares down at him, composing his features into the way he is as a squad leader, unyielding and relentless.

“You want to fuck, you want to have me, you want to eat my chakra up when I overflow--fine. You can do it after we’ve gotten everything _else_ out of the way.” His voice goes cold on top of stony. “Clean up. Get dressed. Make your preliminary report to the Hokage and tell her you need class B2 recovery time. Tell her I’m your touchstone and ask for two days minimum and say that you’ll make your full report after that period of time in addition to the standard status report.” Kakashi casts a critical eye over Iruka, taking in the way he’s shaking, how his eyes are trying to dart, and the ashen color of his skin. Tsunade would be an idiot if she didn’t grant him the recovery time. Kakashi wonders how much sleep Iruka got over the past week. Not nearly enough, no doubt.

“I’ll make arrangements on my end. And _don’t_ forget the paperwork. Get anything else you need from your apartment while you’re out there.” Kakashi makes a mental note to pick up more laundry detergent along with the groceries, because he gets the impression they’re probably going to go through several sets of sheets. “I’ll be back with everything in three hours, tops. If you get here before me, clean up and make yourself comfortable. Understood?” Iruka nods. “Any questions?”

“Just one,” Iruka says, and, internally, Kakashi marvels at how composed he sounds despite how much he’s obviously fraying. (He wonders if Iruka can teach like this, if he _has taught_ like this, if he’s gone to Ichiraku's to have ramen with Naruto hanging on to his control with his fingernails.

Kakashi realizes he’s _concerned_ , and that’s surprising and yet not at all because of _course_ he’s concerned, Iruka is _hurting_ , but he’s surprised because he finds he’s not so concerned with the continuing existence of the things that have hurt Iruka, Owl, so much as he is with the emotional fallout they’ve caused in the man. He’s surprised because that means, for once, that he believes in _himself_ as more than a soldier, a tool, more than duty personified and the utility of his kills.

Iruka did that.)

“What kind of alcohol should I buy?”

It takes a second for the words to permeate into Kakashi’s brain, caught up in his own thoughts like he is--and then he snorts, an especially ungainly noise this time because of his surprise, and says, “Trying to loosen me up, sensei?” voice teasing.

Iruka fakes sheepishness and replies, “Caught red-handed. If you don’t have a preference, I’ll just get a bottle of nice sake.”

“Sake will be fine. Now go shower and change your bandages. I’ll bring in your clothes and help you tie up any trailing ends if you need me to.”

Kakashi half-expects a lewd comment for that but gets a sickly sort of smile from Iruka instead, who lets go of him and exits the bedroom, padding out into the hallway.

Kakashi stands there for a few heartbeats more before shaking himself, grabbing a vest off of a hanger, drawing a kunai from the frame of the bed, and proceeding to remove the jonin patch from the article of clothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out, everyone ;A;! real life conspired against both i and my beta, but here it is! unfortunately, i have some more bad news--i have an ochem midterm this upcoming thursday, so updates will be delayed until post that day so i can study ;v;/ thank you all for your patience and understanding!


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL... IT'S BEEN A WHILE SINCE THAT TEST, EH? good news is, i did well on it, ahaha - i've made a start on typing up (and editing to my current writing standards, yikes!) the chapters in my queue for this fic, so thank you all very much for your patience, your comments, and your support thus far!!

Kakashi gathers the rest of the clothes he'd picked out earlier, replies in an affirmative manner to Iruka’s yell down the hall about using Kakashi’s toothbrush, and takes the collection of items he has in his hands into the bathroom, dropping them onto the counter as he dodges around Iruka, stepping into the still-damp tub to start his own shower.

He takes the quiet opportunity afforded by the water sluicing down on him to finish planning his preparation for the coming days as he briskly washes himself, sparing a moment to ruefully poke again at the marks on his chest before turning off the water and flicking back the curtain.

He automatically puts up his hands, catching the towel Iruka throws at him; Kakashi looks down at it and then back up, blinking at the other, fully-dressed man - who has apparently also borrowed a pair of Kakashi’s sandals. (They’re a little too small for Iruka, but he’s not really going much of anywhere, so Kakashi supposes it’ll be alright - though he internally mourns having to clean the floor again since Iruka walked through the apartment to the bathroom.)

“Why are you still here?” Kakashi asks Iruka bluntly, starting to dry himself before pausing and internally wincing at how that statement had probably sounded.

“No offense taken,” Iruka says to Kakashi’s unspoken apology, then grins at him a little when Kakashi looks up in surprise. “You look like you got caught in a stampede,” Iruka says, changing the subject; his eyes drift down to the lovebites he’d left on Kakashi’s skin, and the grin turns into a self-satisfied smirk. “A stampede of amourous fans.”

Kakashi glances at himself in the clouded mirror and actually does wince this time: his chin is purple, the left side of his face is the same hue in a darker shade, and he has two very large and obvious hickies on either side of his neck - and this isn’t including the multitude of other small wounds from nails and overeager teeth he has on the _rest_ of him.

Iruka makes a small noise of amusement at Kakashi’s obvious dismay and steps closer, eyes tracking to Kakashi’s in the mirror’s reflection.

“I’ll touch you up… Miss Bunny will want a look at you, after all, and…” Iruka trails off as he touches chakra-lit fingers to one bite mark, the naked possessiveness in the action easy for both of them to read; a shiver runs down Kakashi’s spine at the touch of skin to skin, chakra to chakra. Iruka fades the bruises and heals up scratches, reducing the color and severity of the former and latter until Kakashi doesn’t look quite so debauched or battered; Iruka lets one finger trail down the side of Kakashi’s neck as he pulls away, saying a little absentmindedly, “You hold bruises really well…”

“Curse of the skin color,” Kakashi quips gently, then turns his head towards Iruka. “Good luck kiss?”

Iruka shakes his head and his composed demeanor wavers; the eyes that stay on Kakashi flicker desperation at him, a silent plea and starving hunger interwoven so tightly that Kakashi can’t tell one from the other. “I can’t,” Iruka says honestly. “I won’t be able to stop if I do,” and Kakashi can hear the truth in the words. Iruka’s lips twitch in a not-smile, a pathetic attempt at light-heartedness in the face of his own emotions. “Good luck on your end, though.”

Kakashi nods in reply, and Iruka ghosts out of the bathroom; his wraith-quiet steps get louder as he collects himself, composes himself, falls into patterns of behavior more befitting Iruka-sensei: the simple chuunin school teacher, Iruka-sensei, who is nothing more and nothing less than he appears.

The door closes with a final _click_ behind him, and silence falls upon the apartment.

Kakashi exhales the breath he’d been holding - then bends his head to brush his teeth.

 

* * *

 

Kakashi strips the sheets from the bed and starts the laundry machine; he eats four pieces of toast covered in peanut butter and the last banana in the house for breakfast; he writes the two letters he’d been composing in his head since his shower while drinking two cups of tea and folds them up in such a manner that the paper acts as its own envelope, his eyebrows creased like the mountains and valleys he makes. He scrawls a henohenomoheji on the outside of each before exiting his apartment and using two teleportation jutsus, one to get to Gai’s door and the other to travel to Tenzo’s apartment. He leaves Tenzo’s note, which explains Owl’s situation and their decision to take a B2, pinned to the man’s windowsill with a bit of chakra. Gai’s he just slides underneath the man’s door; it has a slightly more abbreviated version of Owl’s condition, Kakashi’s ‘signal flare’ if things go dangerously south with Iruka (unlikely but a necessary precaution), an approximation for how long the B2 would last, and a stern admonition to not physically enter Kakashi’s apartment unless absolutely necessary because a) Gai _does not_ want to tempt Iruka’s temper and b) because Kakashi can’t argue for how fit the place (and they) will be for polite company.

A third teleportation jutsu takes him to the hospital roof, where Kakashi shoves his hands into his pockets and casually saunters over to the stairs leading into the building. He’s pretty sure any medic familiar with his usual attitude towards the place would have been astonished to see him voluntarily enter the building when neither his life nor the lives of anyone immediately surrounding him were in mortal danger, but Kakashi casually strolls down to the topmost floor of the hospital unaccosted, takes a left, and enters the first room with an open door.

He kicks it closed behind him, and the single, female medic inside looks up at the sound.

Keshi Usagi, known as Miss Bunny to the village, eyeballs Kakashi with a speaking, skeptical stare for a few seconds while he slouches silently in front of her desk - before she exhales through her nose and gestures to the chair next to him, activating the soundproofing jutsu on the room with a flicker of chakra as she does so.

“Hello, Hatake.” Intelligent red eyes take in his appearance and the conspicuous lack of Icha Icha in his hands; Miss Bunny folds her hands on the desk before her, tilting her head to the side, and stares at him with all the weight of her forty-odd years. “Haven’t seen you in a long while,” she says, her only concession to the unusualness of Kakashi’s visit. “How may I help you?”

“I need a kit for a B2,” Kakashi replies bluntly, eye focused on the bridge of Miss Bunny’s nose to avoid her searching eyes, and resists the urge to fidget. “For Owl and-or Umino Iruka and myself.”

Keshi, despite her invalidated status, is still a kunoichi; her expression doesn’t shift, though Kakashi’s been in ANBU long enough to sense the change in her chakra that indicates a spike of interest. “Oh?” she says, tone neutral, and continues to stare.

“Umino’s my touchstone,” Kakashi says. “He’s reporting in to Tsunade and asking for the B2 right now. She’ll give it to him; he’s very… Strained, right now.”

Miss Bunny lifts an eyebrow, the only visible indicator of her reaction to the news - but rises to her feet in an ungraceful lurch, her scarred hands bracing herself automatically as she makes the motions to rise, the corners of the process rounded from years of refinement. Keshi had been a tokubetsu jonin specializing in long-range weaponry during the Third Shinobi World War; her specialization had left her vulnerable at the wrong end of a close-range fire jutsu in the middle of a skirmish. Her medical training had kept her from death but hadn’t been able to save her right leg - or been able to prevent the extensive keloid scarring that limited her movements.

She was one of the moderate number of invalidated but still active shinobi in Konoha: hampered by the aftermath of the wounds they’d taken in their service to their home, they chose to continue their devotion to the village instead of retiring to the quiet lives of civilians. They served essential roles in Konoha - they were the police, the clerks organizing the Archives, the assistants to T&I, serving in a myriad of other positions that required individuals with a minimum genin-level security authorization and an intimate knowledge of the workings of shinobi life.

Keshi would never wield a shuriken or kunai as skillfully as she once had, but her photographic memory served her well in her position. Miss Bunny was one of the handful of individuals who ran the Intimacy Relations Office, which provided assistance in everything from virility counseling to post-rape medical treatment; paying a visit to the Sex Office (as it was more commonly known) was the only other way to be cleared for a B2 - the alternative being a direct petition to the current Hokage.

"Here," Miss Bunny says, then closes the curtain to the small, partitioned-off examination area she’d led them to with a sharp snap of her wrist, cutting them both off from the rest of the office. "Strip." She carefully stares at the ceiling as Kakashi starts undressing, setting his clothes aside on a nearby chair; after a pause, she says thoughtfully to the tiles above them,  "Well, I'm glad Owl is back. I bet his class is going to be downright terrifying now, though. Better stay at your place, Hatake; the little monsters know where Iruka-sensei’s apartment is."

Kakashi makes a soft, agonized sound at the very thought of being found by Iruka’s pre-genin, and Miss Bunny smiles sympathetically at him before beginning one of the more humiliating and intimate examinations in the medic-nins' arsenal.

 

“Well, you’re cleared,” she says afterwards; she lets Kakashi get dressed unmolested as she steps out from the curtained area. Her voice floats back to him, partly muffled by the rustle of cloth as she continues while walking away, “Iruka’s last test came out clean as well; his psych profile is compatible with yours; and his preference list matches. Any idea on who the primary recipient partner will be?”

“Probably me,” Kakashi replies a little dryly as he pulls aside the curtain and steps out, tugging at the wrappings around his right thigh to test their tightness; Miss Bunny makes a thoughtful noise in response and adds a few more things to the scrolls she’s packing for him. The tip of her tongue is sticking out just a little from between her burn-scarred lips, and Kakashi can see the outer edge of the seal that binds her to secrecy about ANBU and their identities as he approaches the counter where she stands. The necessity of the seal on Miss Bunny’s voice is one of the reasons the Sex Office has always been run by invalidated shinobi; Konoha needs those who had proven their loyalty but that weren’t likely to leave the village on missions. The Sex Office handles classified information, knows both sides of the ANBU coin; its members are therefore valuable - and have to be kept silent.

“Iruka-sensei is getting the actual paperwork and consent forms, correct?” Miss Bunny asks; Kakashi nods. She makes a pleased noise. “Who are your witnesses?”

“Tenzo - Cat - and Maito Gai, Horse. Both are aware of Iruka and I’s identities.”

“Your signal flare?”

“Given to Gai; I’ll maintain a direct passive link to a display trap. Its condition will change if my chakra reaches a certain level of agitation or anyone displays killing intent within the apartment.”

“Standard alarm layout?”

“Modified. I detailed it to Gai.”

She makes a thoughtful noise.

“Estimation on the length of the B2?”

Kakashi waggles a hand in the air. “Two days at the minimum. The actual end is mutable at the moment - I’m sure Iruka doesn’t want to go back to his little terrors until he’s firmly out of mission mode. We’ll play it by ear.”

Bunny chuckles, a rough, warm sort of sound somehow only made more comforting by the crackle of scar tissue in her lungs. “Alright then. I’ll expect _you_ back here in two days for a checkup and status update, and _both_ you and Iruka will have to brave the usual battery of psych tests before you can go back to active duty.” She gives Kakashi a rueful grin as he winces to convey his displeasure with the idea. “I know, I know, psych tests are no fun, but unless you want a Yamanaka rummaging through your head…,” she trails off teasingly, outright laughing when Kakashi’s visible eyebrow furrows, then tosses both the scrolls she’s holding at him.

Kakashi snatches them out of the air and tucks them into two scroll pockets on his vest after a cursory glance at the first few inches of paper; Miss Bunny nods at him and starts making her way back to her desk.

“Good luck then, Hatake. Dismissed!”


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mind the updated tags!  
> EDIT: well, not the switching one. that's for a later chapter.

Kakashi makes a quick stop at the Memorial, apologizing to the assembled dead for being unavailable in the immediate future and promising to catch them all up on the latest gossip once he returned - then goes grocery shopping. The market and shops are open at this point, and Kakashi makes the rounds of a few, picking up some fresh fruit, peanut butter, bread, eggs, milk, pasta, household supplies. He delivers the lot back to his apartment and puts the laundry in to dry.

He checks the drawers in both his bedroom and bathroom, rummaging through their contents; his endeavors produce one box of expired condoms and a half-dried bottle of lube. Vaguely exasperated at himself, Kakashi sighs and cleans up all the debris he’d unearthed in his search, tossing what needed to be thrown away, and spreads out both scrolls Miss Bunny had given him on the bathroom counter, bending to examine the neat lines of ink painted upon them. Kakashi runs a finger over the appropriate storage seals, releasing two bottles of lubricant, a pack of condoms, and a bottle of high-dose over-the-counter pain medication; he lines them all up along the edge of the counter, stares at them for a moment - before sighing, ducking his head and scratching the back of it sheepishly, wound up in his own thoughts.

He doesn’t give them voice, though; instead, he turns to answer the soft chiming of his laundry machine, dumping the warm cloth onto the sofa to let it air out and cool down, putting away his groceries, setting up his signal flare ward with paper tags and chakra wire. Afterwards, Kakashi returns to where he’s laid out the scrolls, perusing the dedicated B2 kit; he skips over the stored rope, muscle relaxants, and sedatives (the kits attempted to cover a wide range of situations; better safe than sorry, Kakashi supposed) to unseal the silence tags, the courtesy tags, and some of the hygenic supplies.

He goes to place one of the silence tags in each corner of each room of his apartment, powering up the matrix they create with a pulse of chakra; Kakashi forms two hand signs and links their network in with that of his signal flares, calibrating the silence tags to deactivate if the flares popped. Light - or rather, something like the muted reflection of it - ripples briefly across the walls, ceiling, and floor of his apartment, delineating the limits of the space he’d created for himself and Iruka, this pocket of time outside time that their next two days would be spent in, before disappearing, both networks settling, quiescent.

Kakashi puts his hands on his hips, looks at the ceiling, at the floor, around his living room as though to evaluate the space, before moving to nudge the table a little closer to the kitchen and window, fetching his spare futon from the closet and spreading it out into the bared space, pulling down the blackout curtains in the living room when he passes by them. There’s a window in the kitchen; if his and Iruka’s sense of time gets severely off, they can recalibrate to it.

He folds his now-cooled laundry, stacking up perfectly-creased fabric in neat towers and putting it away; he compulsively straightens a few of his minimal visible belongings and dusts here and there around his entire apartment, refamiliarizing himself with the altered space - before checking the time, pushing down the vague, ill-formed anxiousness he feels in his stomach, and going to clean himself up and out.

He wraps himself up in a old, too-short yukata afterwards, ruffles his damp hair, makes another circuit of his living room to pointlessly fidget at the details, and resolutely _does not flinch_ when there’s a knock at his door.

Kakashi pads barefoot over to it, runs a hand over his security wards and checks who it is - and, thankfully, it’s Iruka: Iruka holding a paper bag, with a severely oversized duffle (large enough to fit three pre-geinin in, actually) slung across his back, and a mildly sheepish look on his face.

Kakashi opens the door, unraveling his security wards in the same way the knot in his stomach is dispersing, and gives Iruka a wry, lopsided smile. “I was starting to wonder if you’d gotten cold feet,” he says. “Come in.”

He steps aside to let Iruka by. Iruka’s showered as well, Kakashi notes, and swapped Kakashi’s clothes for his own; Iruka kicks off his sandals and sets his duffle and the rest of his things in either the living room or kitchen, stride confident in the spaces he’s already familiarized himself with.

“Sorry,” Iruka replies as he moves through the rooms, Kakashi trailing him at a distance through his apartment; Kakashi lingers in the doorway to his kitchen, watching as Iruka unpacks boxes and a tall bottle from his paper bag. There’s a flare of chakra, and Iruka’s smile when he turns and sees Kakashi leaning on the jamb is as warm as the sake in the porcelain cup he hands him. “Come on: relax. Sit down. I’m here, I promise. Anko teased me mercilessly about taking a B2, is all, and it took me longer to extract myself than I thought it would.” He passes by Kakashi, running the flat of his hand across the span of Kakashi’s shoulders as he slips by him, and the motion is wordlessly reassuring; Kakashi turns in his wake like a compass drawn to magnetic north and follows him to the table, folding himself down onto one of the cushions as Iruka picks up the set of courtesy tags from Miss Bunny and walks off again to place one on the kitchen window and one on the front door.

He pauses as he walks back into the living room, stopping to rake eyes over Kakashi; the smile Iruka gives him then is _almost_ innocent, _almost_ Iruka-sensei’s - but there’s a hard, hungry edge to it, keenly visible as Iruka takes in Kakashi’s lanky frame, pale form clad in pale green cotton and hair starting to fluff up again as it dries, his sake cup held loosely in one long, fine-boned hand. “Alcohol alright?” Iruka asks after several heartbeats of self-satisfied, starving scrutiny, and Kakashi blinks slowly in response, turning his attention back to his cup and taking an absentminded sip from it, aware of Iruka’s eyes on him all the while.

“It’ll do,” Kakashi teases lightly; the sake is actually quite good, and almost… familiar, really. He has the sneaking suspicion it’s from Tsunade’s personal stash. What _that_ implies is another matter entirely, and Kakashi firmly puts the implications out of his mind for now. “The paperwork?”

“Oh, right -” Iruka turns where he stands, his eyes leaving Kakashi (and Kakashi shivers slightly where he sits, aware of the pressure of Iruka’s gaze sliding off of him, and hides his ensuing small smile in another sip of sake), returning to where he’s put his massive duffle; unzipping one of the side pockets, he withdraws a file folder and brings it back to the table where Kakashi’s sitting, seating himself on one of the other cushions.

“Who was your other witness?” Kakashi asks curiously as he accepts one copy of the forms from the folder, setting down his sake cup to read through the terms of agreement on them. They likely haven’t been updated since the last time he’d taken a B2, but one couldn’t be too careful.

Iruka blushes bright red and ducks his head over his own copy of papers; he mumbles inaudibly at the printed ink in front of him, and Kakashi takes great delight in saying, “I’m sorry, what? I couldn’t hear that. Speak louder?” as cheerfully and obnoxiously as he can manage.

Iruka shoots him a glare, which Kakashi beams at, and straightens, repeating himself with great dignity and complete seriousness: “Ibiki.”

Kakashi stares at Iruka, attention diverted from his reading, one eyebrow raised in surprise, and Iruka blushes even harder underneath the scrutiny. “Yeah, you heard me right. Morino Ibiki was my other witness.”

Kakashi mulls over a few things he could say in response before finally settling on, “I thought you embalmed his office in lime gelatin?”

Iruka very nearly chokes on the sip of sake he’s taking at that moment, hastily setting down his cup. “I did,” he says when he’s recovered, and Kakashi raises his eyebrow at him again. “He borrowed some files from the Archive,” Iruka elaborates; Kakashi’s eyebrow rises even higher. “.... and he was trying to poach me from the secondary list into T&I again,” Iruka admits finally, caving in the face of Kakashi’s wordless skepticism.

Kakashi blinks, and Iruka looks at him, cheeky and tired and proud all the same. “Ibiki and I have had a lot of arguments over the years about where I should ply my skills. He thinks I’m wasted as a hunter on the graveyard shift and would serve Konoha better in T&I. I tell him I have my own reasons for remaining in ANBU where I am.” And then Iruka looks away, down at his sake cup. “... he worries about me, really. I know why he tries to integrate me into T&I. But…” And Iruka inhales, closing his eyes; and Kakashi can see the aspects of Iruka-sensei he sheds with his exhale, bits and pieces of characteristics falling away like flaking mud from his shoulders as they straighten, rise and become rigid and inflexible; and the gaze that the _hunter_ pins Kakashi with is fierce and dark and drowning-deep. “I won’t fold to his will. Not in this. Not while I can still fight.”

Kakashi inhales, tastes saltwater and bruised greenery in the air, and says, softly, “ _Ah_.”

 

Then he puts pen to paper, signing his name to the consent form, reaching out and plucking Iruka’s set from before him and folding them both up together - before draining the last of his sake and setting his cup atop the packet with finality.

“Well, then,” Kakashi says, and there’s a definite change in the air now, a sense of some door having closed behind them, and Kakashi ignores the feeling for the implications it contains, skirting around the knowledge and realizations that would cripple him in this crucial moment. “Now that the preparations are out of the way… where would you like me?”

 

And he gives Iruka the same sunny, cheeky sort of smile that aggravates Tenzo to no end, gently goading Iruka into action, and Iruka stares at Kakashi and Kakashi’s obnoxiously fake smile for several seconds before carefully setting his cup down on the table as well.

“I’ve never taken a B2 before,” Iruka confesses as he stands, rising to his feet to round the corner of the table; he bends to kiss Kakashi after a moment’s pause. It’s just this shy of chaste, a brush of barely-parted lips against Kakashi’s, and Kakashi wonders if it’s an introduction or a prelude or a beginning.

Perhaps it’s all of them.

Kakashi makes a soft noise of amusement in the back of his throat in response to both the kiss and Iruka’s words; he stretches up, unbowing his spine from its slouch to loop one arm around Iruka’s neck, and answers gently, “It’s not exactly difficult.” He presses the side of his face to Iruka’s own, cheek to cheek, and murmurs into the other’s ear, voice low, “Imbibe in earthly pleasure: block out the world. Forget about everything else for as long as it takes for you to lose yourself or for you to remember. Bury yourself in your partners. _Indulge_.”

Iruka’s eyes darken at that, at Kakashi’s words or at Kakashi’s mere proximity, and he straightens as Kakashi’s arm loosens, as his fingers gently pull the hairtie from Iruka’s ponytail, as he runs his hand across the breadth of Iruka’s shoulders, over and down his chest. Kakashi shifts, rocking forward onto his knees to breathe hot over Iruka’s groin, pressing his cheek to the fabric in the same tender way he had before, and Iruka inhales slowly through his nose.

“You’ve done them before?” Iruka’s square hands land on Kakashi, one on his shoulder and the other gently cradling the back of his skull; his voice is slightly breathless, and Kakashi makes a noise of affirmation, getting a firming of the flesh against his face as a response, which he laughs softly at.

“Just the once,” Kakashi elaborates. “Back when I was younger and more hormonal.” Just the once, long after he’d lost his team, when he’d been drowning himself in blood and ANBU trying to forget - and never again afterwards, too disgusted at how hollow it had left him feeling when the narcotic haze of physical pleasure and alcohol had faded. “Never with a touchstone, though.” _I’d never trusted any of them enough to offer and never enough to need as I do now._

Iruka’s hand tightens in Kakashi’s hair, and the expression in his eyes when Kakashi does glance up at him is both guilty and excited. He’d heard Kakashi’s unspoken words, and Kakashi smiles at that.

“Well,” Iruka breathes; he licks his lips, tongue darting out to moisten them, and he’s flushing now, red starting to color his dark skin ruddy. Kakashi wonders absently if Iruka’s entire body blushed when he came, and a small part of him thrills at the knowledge that he’ll find out soon. Iruka’s fingers tighten in his hair minutely. Kakashi breathes out when Iruka does. “Then I guess it’ll be an experience for us both.”

Kakashi hums agreeably - and turns his head enough to unzip Iruka’s fly with his _teeth_.

Iruka’s stomach muscles jump, but he otherwise doesn’t move as Kakashi takes a selfish moment to bury his face into the newly exposed cloth, eagerly inhaling Iruka’s scent through his nose and open mouth. “Fuck,” Iruka curses softly, and Kakashi responds by licking the tip of his cock through his underwear, tasting fabric and laundry detergent and _Iruka_. He inhales again, exhaling hot and damp and heavy over clinging cloth, and puts his mouth fully on him, licking and sucking against the strain of his length, tracing the shape with his lips and tongue.

“I can - see why you keep dog summons, now,” Iruka grits out, before unceremoniously yanking Kakashi’s head away from his crotch; a whine of disappointment escapes Kakashi’s throat before he can swallow it, mind still dazed-drunk on the smell-taste of Iruka.

“Oh god,” Iruka murmurs in response to the sound or to the sight of Kakashi; he lets go of him to fumble at his clothes, stepping away as he unbuckles the shuriken pouch from around his thigh, unwinding the bandages underneath it. Kakashi sits back on his heels, watching him, and exhales shakily as he nurses the flowering burn of arousal in his abdomen. It’s been a long time - a very long time since anything like this, and Kakashi gently runs his hands over his own chest, circling his nipples with his thumbs through cloth before reaching further down to palm his cock, lazily squeezing it and gently stroking.

“You know, Iruka,” Kakashi begins in what would otherwise be a conversational tone (save for the lust-lowered octave of his voice and the breathy edge to his vowels). “I have almost as good of a sense of smell as the Inuzuka.” He sighs in pleasure as he squeezes his cock one last time before letting it go, eye fixed on the other man. “I’m going to be able to smell you on me for _days_ ,” he concludes almost dreamily, words warm, round, and fond.

Iruka freezes, wide eyes darting to Kakashi’s - and then sheds the rest of his clothes without any care or concern for order, reason, or where they land. “Bed. _Now,_ ” he growls, before peeling off his shirt and flinging it aside; it ends up on top of the bookshelf, Kakashi notes with amusement.

Iruka begins advancing on him, arms open as though he means to grab him, a wicked gleam in his eyes, and Kakashi laughs, rolling back onto his feet with a deft motion and leaping backwards out of Iruka’s reach. Iruka follows close on his heels, feet sure even in the dimness of the unfamiliar living room, and grabs for the trailing edge of Kakashi’s yukata, it having been loosened by their antics; Kakashi dances just out of range until he runs out of horizontal room to be chased, leaping onto his living room wall to take a few steps before flinging himself off of it, over Iruka - only to be yanked backwards, Iruka having executed a liquid turn mid-pounce to reach out for him, fingers closing around the back of Kakashi’s yukata.

Iruka twists, landing on both feet, and steadies himself, reeling Kakashi in gently but firmly by his grip on Kakashi’s clothes when Kakashi’s feet meet the floor as well; Kakashi goes easily, willingly captured prey, and makes a low, pleased noise in the back of his throat when Iruka presses himself against Kakashi’s back in a hot, long line of skin, his erection pushing at the fabric over Kakashi’s ass.

“ _Honestly_ \- I don’t know why I’m surprised you have to make this difficult,” Iruka mutters; he bends his head to mouth at Kakashi’s neck, undoing his work from earlier on the bite there and sucking it red and livid again. One of his hands slides into the vee of Kakashi’s yukata, gently scraping the edge of a nail over the marks he’d left and toying with a nipple, lightly rolling and tugging; Kakashi’s fingers go to Iruka’s hips and dig in. “Take your clothes off unless you want them ruined.”

“Must I? My hands are a little preoccupied right now, you know,” Kakashi returns, flexing his fingers to prove the point; Iruka lets go of his neck and makes an exasperated noise, the hand fisted in the fabric at Kakashi’s back releasing its hold and sliding down to undo the tie to Kakashi’s yukata. Iruka pulls the fabric off of Kakashi, wads it up, and tosses it unceremoniously at the couch with a hint of vindictiveness. Kakashi chuckles - and then makes a soft ‘ah!’ noise when Iruka pulls him close, his cock rutting slippery-hot against Kakashi’s bare ass.

“Were you honestly not wearing underwear that entire time?” Iruka asks, grinding close as if to punctuate the statement. His fingers wrap around Kakashi’s cock, and Iruka hooks his chin over Kakashi’s shoulder to watch pale, pinking flesh disappear into tanned skin and reappear, disappear and reappear as Kakashi makes soft, wordless noises into Iruka’s hair.

“Thinking ahead. Being prepared. Mark of a good ninja, you know,” Kakashi manages, and then outright cries out when Iruka moves his hand further down, slides fingers slicked with Kakashi’s precum underneath and _into_ him, palm pressed firmly against his perineum. “Oh, that’s just - kh! - unfair.”

Iruka just makes an agreeable humming sound and bends his knees, lowering them both to the floor; he pulls Kakashi’s thighs over his own, hitching him onto his lap with both hands (Kakashi clenches his teeth over the sound he makes when Iruka and gravity press deep into him; is left panting, his grip on Iruka’s wrist weak, after the ragged jag of pleasure finishes ebbing through him; and doesn’t resist when Iruka spreads his legs further open by moving his own.)

“The truth is, Kakashi, I’m greedy and possessive.” Iruka runs his free hand up the length of Kakashi’s body from hip to collarbone and grips lightly at the base of Kakashi’s throat, uses it to bend him backwards to kiss Kakashi gently, fondly on the cheek. “I feel proprietary over those that I like, and I’ll fight tooth and nail for their betterment - though you’ve probably seen that already with my students.” The hand around Kakashi’s throat tightens fractionally before loosening completely; Iruka strokes his palm back down, Kakashi wobbling for a unstable moment with the lack of balanced support - before folding rather ungracefully back into Iruka’s solidity.

“And I’m even worse with those I care about.” Kakashi’s hips jerk when Iruka’s fingers close back around Kakashi’s cock, and he curses when Iruka spreads the digits in him, scissoring him further open in a thick and gritty slide that has Kakashi shuddering for it being just-shy of too much. “I want to protect them, shield them close until I know they can conquer the world, and it drives all my friends _insane._ They’re people, too, who have to live their own lives, and I clutch _so_ _hard_ at their threads...” He punctuates the statement with a sharp twist of the fingers in Kakashi, rough with the delicate gland he’s pressed against, and slides a third finger in, slippery with the slick he’s milking out of Kakashi with the unrelenting strokes against his prostate and pulls at his cock. “I’m so afraid to let go, afraid I’ll lose them forever too easily.” Iruka’s voice is steady, would almost be conversational if it weren’t for the intensity in his words, and the contrast between them and the vicious intensity of the sensations Iruka is coaxing out of his body drives Kakashi higher, winds him tighter, short nails digging into Iruka’s skin.

“And as for you… mmm, god, Kakashi. Kakashi, _Kakashi_.” The dazed man can hear the _teeth_ in Iruka’s next words, the hunter’s composure finally buckling underneath what he’s saying and the plush, wet grip of Kakashi against his fingers and the half-drowned look in Kakashi’s single open eye, Iruka’s voice coloring Mist and exposing the visceral mass of passion and ferocity that fuels his ANBU name. “I’ve never met a person I want to protect or _possess_ more. I want to grip your thread so tight; want to wind it around my fingers and legs and loop lengths of it around my throat until we’re bound so tightly together that if you fall, you take me with you, because of all the people I know, you need the support the most, you _idiot bastard_. I want to have you, want to have _all of you_ , the rest of the world and their propriety be damned; I want them all to know that if they fuck with you, they’ll get _me_ as well.” Iruka jostles them, bends his head to mouth at the scars on the slope of Kakashi’s shoulder, the back of it, and scrapes his teeth incredibly gently against the frantic flutter of Kakashi’s pulse where it stands in his neck, delicate in his ministrations despite the blinding rage and possessiveness in his voice.

“I have a terrible, terrible temper, just like my mother, just like the sea, and I’m not afraid to use it for once - and that scares me, but I don’t _care._ I’d drown the entire world if it meant protecting you, Kakashi. Kakashi. _Kakashi._ ”

And oh, Kakashi - Kakashi is so focused upon Iruka’s words, their meanings, their importance, and the raw emotions that fuel them, that make Iruka’s voice pitch so low and tremble in his litany of his name, that his own peak catches him by surprise; his orgasm blindsides him in its intensity: the breath freezes in his lungs; his spine bows hard enough suddenly enough to creak under the strain; his eyes are wide but unseeing as his world shudders and crumples underneath him - and the only sound he recognizes over the thundering of his pulse in his ears is Iruka’s satisfied snarl as the hunter lifts him, unresisting, carrying them both over to the futon when Kakashi’s strength goes, leaving his limbs weak and heavy and his mind unravelled.

He’s vaguely aware of the press of cloth against his chest, of slick hands on him, of Iruka - Iruka stretching himself out over Kakashi, the hunter quivering with leashed tension, of one of Iruka’s square hands wrapped around both of his wrists and holding them against the fabric above his head, of Iruka sunken so deeply in Kakashi’s chakra system and not bothering to hide it that Kakashi could almost imagine Iruka himself sliding underneath his skin and pressing against every inch of him from inside. He’s waiting - Iruka is waiting - and Kakashi has almost strung enough thoughts together to ask Iruka what he’s waiting _for_ when Iruka answers his unspoken question unprompted with a single, cleaving thrust into Kakashi’s unresisting body.

Kakashi chokes on nothing, gagging on air as his thoughts scatter once again, viciously rattled apart by the sharp lances of sensation that split him open; he shifts instinctively, muscles and nerves howling at the abuse to them so soon, too soon, and Iruka growls, grip tightening on Kakashi’s wrists, pressing himself down on him, pinning him underneath him until Kakashi can’t move. Kakashi can feel Iruka’s mouth hovering over the nape of his neck, lips pulled back, and Kakashi bares his own teeth in response, squeezing his eyes shut against the unrelenting, monstrous waves of pure _feeling_ that are neither pleasure nor pain swamping him to tense his internal muscles against the punishing drag of Iruka _taking_ from his limp, sated body.

Iruka curses, snarling Kakashi’s name right before sinking his teeth into the white skin of Kakashi’s nape, marring it as he freezes, hips grinding rough circles against Kakashi’s as he comes in hot, liquid pulses inside him; Kakashi heaves, clawing air into his lungs, and stills.

 

Iruka pulls away from him roughly, letting go of his hands, and Kakashi rolls his shoulders, managing to get his arms underneath him before Iruka is back, square fingers pressing once again into Kakashi. They’re gentle this time, buzzing with an almost-familiar chakra, crackles like Kakashi’s lightning filling the former void of Iruka’s from when Iruka had been linked so close in his system; Iruka had taken the excess energy they’d produced to fill his own depleted reserves, as Kakashi had said he could hours ago. Iruka checks for damage, fingers gentle, and pushes his cum back into Kakashi when it spills; a shiver runs down the length of Kakashi’s spine when Iruka removes his fingers and presses a closed-mouth kiss to the sluggishly bleeding bite mark on the back of his neck.

 

There is nothing of gentleness in Kakashi when Iruka pulls away; the hunter moves and Kakashi is upon him in the next second, riding Iruka’s fall back onto the futon and mercilessly leaning his weight into the motion so that it knocks the air from Iruka when they land. Kakashi’s grip on Iruka’s wrists is like _iron_ , pinning him immobile, and their faces are inches from each other. Kakashi’s teeth may not be quite as vicious as those of the Inuzuka, but his fangs are far sharper than the average man’s; he bares them at Iruka in an unsubtle threat and moves with Iruka’s instinctive buck to free himself, slamming him back down against the fabric and the floor hard enough to rattle the sake cups where they sit on the table.

“You don’t _own_ me. You _also_ don’t breed me like a bitch and mark me like that without _telling_ me first.” Iruka twists underneath him, fluid like water, and Kakashi _snarls_ , an inhuman sound that’s stopped hunting wolves in their tracks ripping out of his throat. Iruka stills, reason starting to bleed through base reaction, and Kakashi continues after meeting his gaze squarely.

“I’m not a name on the Memorial Stone yet, and _neither_ of us are helpless creatures needing to be rescued. I want to protect you as well, but I _trust you_ to be able to hold your own until you can’t and then to come to me for _help._ I _trust_ you.” Iruka looks openly surprised beneath him, and Kakashi eases off of him fractionally, resettling his weight.

“We’re both hunters with hunter’s names: the Hokage’s loyal dog and a silent predator of the night. It would be too easy for us to tear each other apart on each other's claws and teeth. So _talk_ to me, and I’ll make an effort to speak more clearly as well.” He lets go of Iruka’s wrists and sits back on his heels, sheathing his snarl but still staring at the other man, jet black eye boring into Iruka’s brown. “This sort of relationship requires give and take; we both have too many buried secrets and old memories for it to be otherwise. So talk. I’ll listen.” He allows the brush of Iruka’s hands on his hips, though he wraps his own fingers around Iruka’s wrists warningly, pointedly. “I’ll be your port - but it’s the responsibility of the ship to know where the reef is.”

Gently, he pulls Iruka’s hands away from him, standing and stepping away from where Iruka lies and evaluating his physical condition through the myriad of aches and pains the action produces; behind him, Iruka rolls onto his side, gaze trained on Kakashi. The latter catches the look when he half-turns, intending to head to the bathroom, and he tilts his head curiously in Iruka’s direction. Iruka half-smiles wryly.

“You’re terrifying, you know,” Iruka says, no heat or ire in his voice. “I’m very fond of it.”

Kakashi blinks at him once - before snorting out a laugh.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which i continue to take liberties with canon and iruka provides some exposition.

Kakashi tells himself there is a world of difference between willing surrender and _taking_ gifts not offered as he steps underneath the lukewarm spray of the shower. His hair is soaked almost instantly, and he repeatedly increases the temperature of the water bit by bit as he rinses sweat and cum and the blood from the bite on the nape of his neck off of his body. He critically eyes his wrists where Iruka had gripped them, presses fingertips to the ache over his left hipbone. He’ll bruise from this, from what they’re doing, but they are hurts freely given. Whatever small pains he feels are clean, and that’s enough to put his mind at ease about them.

Kakashi is washing the soap off of his body when he feels Iruka’s chakra stir and approach the bathroom; Kakashi twitches aside the shower curtain to see if Iruka enters, watches as the other slows to a stop, and goes back to cleaning himself. For a long moment, there’s nothing but the hiss of the shower filling the space between them.

“I want to tell you things,” Iruka says after a pause. “Because you’re right. You’re right. But I don’t know where to start, now. There are a lot of secrets that involve me.”

Kakashi closes his eyes and tips his head back and lets the water just beat down on his upturned face for a moment, before saying, “How old are you?”

“Twenty five.”

“Your file in the open Archives says twenty three.”

“I know.” Iruka laughs a little bitterly. “That was partly the Old Man’s doing. My mother defected from Mist, fleeing from the carnage. She was a hunter-nin for them – and pregnant with me before she left.” He stops as Kakashi turns off the water and steps out, dripping, and starts again with, “She was in Konoha’s Bingo Books, actually. I don’t know if you’ve seen the old ones, but…” He continues when Kakashi nods. “Bloody Mist’s Double-Edged Scalpel. She was a combat medic - chakra blades and healing. She traded her freedom and her village’s secrets for my safety. I was born while… negotiations were going on. Before she officially existed in the eyes of the village.”

“Your sire had a bloodline limit?”

Kakashi towels himself off as Iruka purses his lips, brown eyes training themselves somewhere on the tile at the edge of the bathtub; Kakashi wets a washcloth afterwards, passing it to Iruka, who takes it automatically and stares at it a moment before starting to wipe himself down.

“I don’t know. She never told me - but he might have. Or maybe the family had been talented enough that it didn’t matter whether or not they did. Maybe they’d been too dangerous to let live either way.” Iruka’s methodical movements slow. “I don’t even know if she’d loved him, or if I… she never talked about him, and she married my father a few years after she came to Konoha.” His lips quirk to one side, but there’s nothing of amusement in his smile - just a quiet darkness, a sort of gallows humor. He’s still not looking at Kakashi. “My genjutsu ability is from whoever my sire was. Not a true bloodline limit in me - just a talent. She taught me chakra control because that was what her specialty had been, and I learned traps from my dad because that was what his father had taught him, but the genjutsu… She would get so _angry_ whenever I did the exercises the Sandaime’s people taught me. Not at me, _never_ at me, but she’d go to the ANBU training grounds and flatten recruits for a few hours to calm down.”

Kakashi exhales a tiny breath in surprise. “ANBU? But she was never a member of Konoha’s main forces…?”

“Not officially. But it didn’t stop her from putting on a headband and vest _that night_ and - ” Iruka cuts himself off as his face darkens; he squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, raises a hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose. Both of them stand in the bathroom, naked, as Iruka collects himself enough to speak again.

“No, she wasn’t,” he says finally. “But she taught Konoha’s hunters her techniques and trained the new recruits. It was part of the deal she made for my life and hers. She was kept under very tight surveillance. It might even have been where and why she met dad. I don’t know.

“She took care of me anyway, despite that. I don’t think she ever resented me for - at least that I can remember. She loved me. She loved _us._ ” Iruka exhales one long breath, shaky, and repeats, softer, “She loved us,” and there is a terrible thread of doubt underneath the firm words, a child’s innocent confidence shaken by old unspoken truths and implied possibilities and the grief of _never being able to know_ – the damage of a love and a relationship cut too short too soon, that left nothing but raw, echoing space behind.

Kakashi thinks of ANBU’s instructors, who didn’t teach so much as demonstrate, illustrating techniques from behind completely white masks that were unstylized save for their fleeting resemblance to rough human faces: unfinished, undetailed visages that moved like ghosts, blank. ANBU were recruited for their abilities. ANBU’s _instructors_ were there to teach already-skilled individuals those techniques that were not part of a normal nin’s repertoire: how to move not as an individual but as an ANBU, one of replaceable, interchangeable many; how to be ruthless, pragmatic; how to move beyond the norms of viciousness, beyond the realm of life or death and into the territory of brutal, gory efficiency folded into controlling hand signs and tightly-laced chakra that bordered on Forbidden Techniques.

Kakashi can see why a woman of Bloody Mist who had been infamous enough to make Konoha’s Bingo Books (and survive being in them) would have been recruited to be an instructor for ANBU. Kakashi can see why Iruka would doubt, can see where her allegiances would have been divided between her life and the price of her loyalty to Konoha, as a traitor to her home village. Kakashi can see where Iruka would have gotten his talent for layering his life, if this was the way his mother had lived: the civilian housewife of a Konoha jonin and one of the cold ANBU who’d imparted the terrible truths of the eternal battlefield to men and women dressed in the visages of beasts or death.

Kakashi reaches out slowly and grasps Iruka’s wrist in his hand, _squeezes_ until Iruka’s skin goes bloodless around the edges of his grip, and Iruka’s distant gaze clears, sharpening at the pain until brown irises flick up to meet Kakashi’s black.

“What were their names?” Kakashi asks, voice low, tone urgent.

Iruka inhales a breath and speaks on the release of air.

“Umino Ikkaku. Umino Kohari.” A ghost of a genuine smile brushes over Iruka’s lips. “Though everyone she knew called her Tora,” and Kakashi can feel himself smile a little in response as the statement sinks in.

“My my, the tiger of the sea? How fitting.”

“Isn’t it?” Iruka lilts his voice, Mist coloring his words, and Kakashi moves closer in response, attracted by the tilt of the other man’s head as Iruka finally, _finally_ looks at him directly; Kakashi’s fingers loosen and slide up from Iruka’s wrist, along the muscle of his forearm to the crook of his elbow. There’s a tender patch of new scar tissue there, evidence of Tsunade’s work, and Iruka moves in counterpoint to Kakashi, the two of them tracing a circle around their contact, bare feet moving in the shadow of the other’s as though in a slow dance, closing the space between them until they’re pressed near enough to share breath.

Kakashi shuts his eye and savors the moment, the intimacy of the damp heat Iruka puts off and the ebb and pull of his chakra against his, before pulling away.

“Shall we, then?”

 

Iruka is the one to ease them back on the futon; it’s been cleaned slightly (for which the fastidious side of Kakashi is glad of), and Iruka presses close, pulling the blankets fully over Kakashi and half over himself, making a soft noise after as he wraps arms around Kakashi.

“You’re so _thin_. I mean, I’d always imagined you as lanky, but you barely have any spare flesh on you.” The drag of Iruka’s fingertips against the faint pressure of Kakashi’s ribs underneath pale skin is both lazy and searching.

“Kurenai once called me a greyhound,” Kakashi admits to the top of Iruka’s head. He buries his nose in glossy hair after a brief moment of thought and breathes in, closing his eyes. “Skinny and sorta dopey looking; good at what it does and lazy otherwise.” Iruka splutters a laugh against Kakashi’s collarbones at his words, then starts chafing his hands easily against Kakashi’s sides, gentle. Kakashi lies quiescent in his embrace long enough that his eye begins to close, lulled by Iruka’s soothing touch, before adding, quietly, “Should I share something of myself to even the balance?”

Iruka’s hands slow fractionally before returning to their steady petting. “Maybe later,” he murmurs in reply, soft lips moving against the thin skin stretched over Kakashi’s clavicles. “You’ve told me things about yourself already. I know how difficult it… I know how _precious_ those things are.” Iruka pauses. “And, besides - this shouldn’t be a thing that needs tallies. It’s not about tit for tat or an eye for an eye. So don’t worry about any debts owed to me. There are none.”

Kakashi sighs and lets his eye close fully; silence falls and Iruka’s hands eventually still, fingers and palms sprawled across the span of Kakashi’s waist.

“Hey Iruka. It’s been over a month since you rescued me,” Kakashi says suddenly, though he doesn’t open his eye; he doesn’t flinch, either, when Iruka’s hands squeeze him reflexively where they lie, continues with, “So, happy belated anniversary, I suppose.”

“Oh.” Iruka opens his mouth and then stops as though at a loss for what to say, unsure how to proceed - and eventually settles on smiling wryly, shifting to pull Kakashi closer and tilting his head to press a kiss to the length of Kakashi’s throat. “Happy anniversary, then.”

And Kakashi smiles, satisfied, breathes in, and lets himself drop off into the sleep his well-worn body needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hilariously, the fudging of iruka's age is actually based off of a misprint in the official databooks; apparently, it was listed as 25 in one and then corrected to 23 in the next, HAHA! when i saw the bit of trivia, i felt like i totally had to make a nod to it somehow in this fic!
> 
> also, iruka doesn't actually have a bloodline limit/his biological dad didn't have one; iruka's mother had her own reasons for defecting from mist but trying to preserve a bloodline wasn't one of them. everything iruka says is mainly speculation on his part, the results of him trying to fill in the blanks in his heritage himself as he grew into it; given how loyal a hunter nin would logically have been, tora betraying mist would have made the most sense if she'd been trying to protect something like the last of a family bloodline. however, she was stubbornly tightlipped about many details and specifics when she actually came to konoha; that, along with her skill level, was actually why there was such a long negotiation period and a high level of surveillance on her afterwards.
> 
> iruka's dad actually was part of said surveillance, one of the few ANBU willing to repeatedly, stubbornly butt heads with her, even if she could wipe the floor with him in a straight, no-holds-barred fight; they met not-so-cute and ended up falling in love somewhere along the way, probably in the middle of an argument LMAO. BUT ANYWAY, UH, THIS ISN'T THEIR STORY AND SORRY FOR THE LONG AUTHOR'S NOTE [SWEATS]


	25. Chapter 25

Kakashi wakes briefly when Iruka start snoring softly and falls back asleep with a smile on his lips; the next time he wakes, it’s to Iruka carding gentle fingers through Kakashi's hair, caught in the act of getting up. “Go back to sleep,” Iruka murmurs to him, adding, “Just making food,” when Kakashi grunts inquiringly.

Satisfied, Kakashi closes his eye again and manages to stay asleep through the background clatter of cooking, his restless mind briefly pushed down into deeper slumber by the particular physical ache of his body and the soft drag on his chakra from Iruka; when he wakes the third time, it’s to the smell of breakfast and a complaining grumble from his empty stomach. Blearily, Kakashi props himself up on an elbow, the covers sliding off of his naked shoulders, to squint into the kitchen.

Iruka waves at him from his perch atop the counter, a cup of tea in one hand and his legs swinging. He has pants on again, Kakashi notes with mild disappointment.

“I have food if you’re willing to expend the effort of sitting upright,” Iruka calls out at him, a teasing note in his voice; Kakashi makes a grumbling noise in response, his eye dropping to the angle of sunlight spilling out onto his kitchen floor, and realizes belatedly that it’s far closer to noon than anything resembling morning at this point.

“Why did you make _french toast_?” Kakashi complains half-heartedly, mostly just to hear Iruka scoff at him from his perch in the kitchen.

(He also does make an effort towards actually getting up, only for the muscles of his ass and back to protest the attempt suddenly and vehemently, which pulls a soft curse from his mouth. Kakashi lies on his face for a moment of abject regret before sighing and propping himself up again to press a hand to his lower back, using chakra to tease apart the mess of knots his muscles had settled into in his nap.)

“I also found the painkillers and have tea,” Iruka offers from beside the futon; his hand covers Kakashi’s and a pulse of healing chakra – familiar in the faint prickle of lightning at its edges, fueled by siphoned energy as it is – unravels the worst of the knots. “Sorry about being so rough earlier. If I’d known it’d been that long for you, I would have started out easier.”

“No you wouldn’t have,” Kakashi replies mildly. Gently, he pushes Iruka’s hand away, sitting up gingerly with his legs folded underneath him. “You needed the act in that intensity more than I needed my everything to not be sore afterwards.” Ruefully, he rubs the back of his neck as well before twisting to one side; a cacophony of pops rings out down his spine and Kakashi hums in satisfaction.

Iruka makes a noise caught somewhere between concern and amusement and straightens, lingering nearby as Kakashi makes it to his feet. “You can fuck me next round,” he offers as Kakashi pads to the kitchen; Kakashi makes a disparaging noise into his tea.

“Do you _want_ to be fucked?” he asks bluntly before taking two pills from the bottle on the counter that had been sitting next to the filled teacup and the covered plate of french toast.

There’s a pause, and then Iruka admits, “No, not really right now.”

Kakashi makes a motion with his hand as though to say ‘there you go’ without turning away from putting half a piece of french toast into his mouth; Iruka makes an exasperated noise before plastering himself to Kakashi’s back, hands coming around to link with each other above Kakashi’s navel.

“You are _such_ a brat,” Iruka hisses into the sleep-mussed disarray of Kakashi’s hair. Kakashi grunts in a self-satisfied manner in reply before inhaling more of the food – the french toast leans heavier towards spice than sweetness, and Kakashi suspects the flavor is Iruka’s acknowledgement of his preferences. “I also can’t believe you bought survival supplies. Did you expect to have to peel yourself away from me?”

Kakashi shrugs, making Iruka’s head bob for where he’s propped his chin on Kakashi’s shoulder. “I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve never seen you fall apart before, and I’ve never been your lover.”

Iruka snorts rudely. “You’re not missing much. Mission sex or one night stands, usually, and I have to be especially discreet because of my teaching job. Gossip, you know. It makes it hard to have a real relationship, even in a village like this, when you combine it with hunting.”

Kakashi thoughtfully tilts back his head, picking over Iruka’s words and the tone they’d been delivered in. “You’ve tried?”

“Here and there. People get desperate, you know?” Iruka’s voice softens, goes abstracted and distant. “Living on the edge like we do. A lot of them seize the opportunity: leap without looking. Willing to let it happen before it burns out and to not look too hard at the little things that don’t add up while they do it – it could end the next day, after all.” He lapses into silence, before adding, tone forcibly lighter, “Though I’ve never dated the parents of any of my students. That’s just asking for trouble. You?”

“Not much. The appeal of dating fades when you start second-guessing whether or not people do it because they’re honestly interested or because they like the glamour of dating someone with my reputation,” Kakashi says dryly. “It’s even worse for sex – then I get people trying to sleep their way into an established bloodline. I keep to myself.”

There’s another abstracted pause, during which Kakashi polishes off the last of the french toast, starting in on the fruit and his second cup of tea, before Iruka ventures, tone suddenly tentative, “But… don’t you start craving it? Another person?”

Kakashi takes a sip of his tea before offering, “I have a low sex drive?” He puts the cup down. It clinks softly against the countertop. “I never really questioned it. And after I started getting infamous, I wasn’t sent out on infiltration or seduction missions, so it never became an issue.”

Iruka’s still against him, save for his fingers, which knead uneasily against Kakashi’s stomach; Kakashi presses a hand against them, and Iruka lets him stop their motion. There’s a heavy weight in the air, Iruka’s shoulders squared against something that he doesn’t want to ask.

“When… was your last B2?”

That’s not it. It’s not the question Iruka can’t yet ask, but it skirts around the edges of it, and Kakashi is willing to let him work his own way up to forming the words. He answers the question: “Almost a decade ago now?”

“ _Seriously?_ You must have been a – a teenager then.”

“With all the emotional grandstanding and hormones to match.”

“Did you have acne?”

Kakashi groans theatrically. “Must you remind me? Look an inch down from where your chin is planted.” He’s silent as Iruka pulls away enough to see and smiles when Iruka giggles.

“Are those _scars?_ Awwww, that’s adorable. Jeeze, right where the straps from the ANBU armor are – no wonder they left marks.” Iruka resettles himself against Kakashi. “It’s alright; I have a few deep ones, too, at my hairline. I’m just glad I get the classroom full of brats out before they hit puberty.”

“Thank you for your support of your fellow instructors,” Kakashi replies dryly.

Iruka smiles beatifically. “Yeah, I know. Kurenai bitches to me all the time about the terrors of hormones. Apparently she caught Kiba and Shino a few weeks ago fooling around instead of training like they were supposed to.”

“The Inuzuka’s youngest brat and the Aburame’s _heir_?”

“They were just messing with each other. Probably.” Iruka pauses and then adds, “Well. It’s something that happens to a lot of genin teams… sometimes it’s easier to get through all of it with people you can trust, that you’ve spent the past years growing up with, you know?”

“I kissed Gai once,” Kakashi deadpans. “We both agreed to never, ever do it again. That’s about as close as I’ve come to experiencing that particular phenomena.” Iruka smothers his laugh against Kakashi’s skin, and Kakashi smiles to cover the sudden pang of loneliness he feels. The closest he’d ever really come had been Rin’s crush on him and Obito’s infatuation with her. Maybe if they’d had more time together, or if they hadn’t been in the middle of a war…

“My genin team is dead as well,” Iruka murmurs softly; he doesn’t move his head from where he’s placed it, and Kakashi can feel the shape of his lips as he forms the words to speak. They come out slightly muffled, but distinct nonetheless. “I’m the only one left out of the three of us. One died during her chunin exam. The other was an accident – a stupid death during a training session, of all things. He’d done the taijutsu move a hundred times before; it was just… he slipped and fell and snapped his neck. Dead instantly.” Iruka exhales and his arms tighten. “I was out of the village when it happened. Both times, I heard the news secondhand. I wasn’t close to either of them – not in the way Naruto is to Sakura and Sasuke, or the rest of the Rookie Nine are to their teams. But. It still hurt.

“Neither of them are on the Stone. They didn’t die doing something heroic; they died striving to be something _better_. It’s cruel in its own way.”

They stand in silence, still for long moments at the counter, each lost in their own thoughts and memories – before Kakashi shifts his weight, turning his head to look at the top of Iruka’s head where it’s buried against the back of his shoulder.

“My, my… such heavy subjects,” he says gently. “Iruka… take me back to bed?”

And Iruka is still for the length of a steady heartbeat before he sighs gustily against Kakashi’s skin – and pulls away, threading his fingers through Kakashi’s and stepping back.

“Alright.”

 

And Iruka takes gently from him this time, lays them down on their sides on the futon and presses up close behind Kakashi, front to his back, and pulls one fine-boned leg up to expose him. He presses slick fingers into Kakashi, opens him back up slow and easy, and exchanges kisses with him over his shoulder, Kakashi’s hand on his own length matching the plush push-pull of Iruka within him. When Iruka finally, _finally_ presses into him, Kakashi groans long and low at the sensation of foreign heat and parting around Iruka; Iruka smooths one hand along the tender skin of the insides of Kakashi’s thighs and hooks fingers underneath one knee to spread him further. He lays open-mouthed kisses against pale skin flushing rose, and Kakashi reaches back to tangle his fist in silky locks of Iruka’s hair, and Iruka fucks him long and slow and deep with every thrust, persistent and heavy until it feels like melting, like drowning in heat and hedonism, water filling his lungs. When they come, chakra tangling with each other, one drags the other down in the undertow of their pleasure, and in that moment it hardly matters that they can’t find heads or tails of one another, willingly losing themselves.

“Stay,” Kakashi mumbles, one hand reaching back without looking to brush clumsy against Iruka’s hip, halting the other’s movements; Iruka stills, exhales shaky against the back of Kakashi’s neck and doesn’t pull out, instead just slowly lowering Kakashi’s leg, running the pads of his fingers over the long muscles of his thigh and up to the angled curves of his waist. He pulls Kakashi close, tangling their legs together, and Kakashi makes a muzzy, ill-formed noise of pleasure in response, wraps long, fine-boned fingers around Iruka’s wrist, and drifts off into the shallow sleep his body clamors for.

Iruka lies awake for much longer, eyes closed, familiarizing himself with the ebb and flow of Kakashi’s system, his quiet worries from before rising up once again in the empty space. He shifts his other hand, presses the ball of his thumb against Kakashi’s breastbone, slowly skims it down the skin along the center of his body and back up before flattening his palm against the slope of Kakashi’s chest, over his heart.

It’s enough, then. This will have to be enough.


End file.
